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M0UNT PLEASANT BRANCH 



IfllnwDii/- imRARVll 




Class. 



P. L. 123 



BIOGRAPHICAL 



HISTORICAL SKETCHES. 



T. BABIXGTON MACATJLAY. 

it 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 



846 & 848 BEOADWAY. 
M.DCCC.LVn 



M»UNT PLEASANT BRANCH 
•Al 

U5T 



TRANSFER 
D. O. PUBLIC LIBRARY 
SEPT. lO, 1940 




fRICT OF COLUMBIA PROPERTI 
REFERRED FROM PUBLIC LIBP«ART 



CONTENTS. 

pAoa 

Francis Atterbury 7 

John Bunyan 22 

Olivier Goldsmith 37 

Samuel Johnson 52 

James 1 89 

Charles 1 94 

Archbishop Laud 95 

Charles II 9G 

The Earl of Clarendon 100 

Louis XIV 105 

The Cabal 106 

Thomas Osborn, Earl of Danby 108 

Sir William Temple 110 

George Savile, Viscount Halifax Ill 

Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland 114 

The Duke of Monmouth 118 

Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester 121 

Sidney Godolphin , 122 

Francis North, Lord Guildford '. 122 

Judge Jeffreys ......*. 124 

The Last Days of Jeffreys 128 

Richard Baxter 133 

William Penn 134 

John Locke 139 

Archibald, Earl of Argyle A 141 

Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel...... .....,.,,.. 147 



IV CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

Catharine Sedley 149 

William III., Mary II., and Bishop Burnet 154 

John Dryden 171 

The Duchess of Marlborough 173 

Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford 176 

Charles Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury 177 

Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset 179 

William Williams, Solicitor General 182 

Henry Sidney, Brother of Algernon 183 

Schomberg 184 

John, Lord Lovelace 185 

Antonine, Count of Lauzun 187 

The First Ministry of William III 188 

Unpopularity of William III 192 

Popularity of Mary II 196 

Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury 198 

The Count of Avaux 202 

Cruelty of Rosen at the Siege of Londonderry 203 

Sir James Dalrymple ; 205 

Lord Melville. 208 

Carstairs 209 

The Marquess of Ruvigny 210 

The Duke of Schomberg . 211 

Admiral Torrington .' 213 

Avarice of Marlborough 215 . 

Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells 216 

Charles Leslie 218 

Dr. William Sherlock 219 

George Hicks 226 

Jeremy Collier 227 

Henry Dodwell 229 

Kettlewell and Fitzwilliam 231 

Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury 232 

Aldrich and Jane 236 



CONTENTS. V 

PAGE 

Edmund Ludlow 237 

Sir Robert Sawyer 240 

Caermarthen 243 

Sir John Lowther 244 

Sir John Trevor 246 

The Princess of Denmark (Queen Anne) and her Favour- 
ites 247 

George Fox 253 

William Fuller 259 

John, Earl of Breadaleane , 266 

Robert Young 268 

Grandval 278 

John Bart 281 

James Whitney 282 

Anne Bracegirdle and Lord Mohun 283 

Charles Blount 286 

Dean Swift 295 

The Lord Keeper Somers 298 

Charles Earl of Middleton 300 

William III. at the Battle of Landen 303 

William Anderton 304 

Charles Montague 308 

Thomas Wharton • 312 

Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford and Mortimer 316 

Paul Foley 321 

Elizabeth Villiers 322 

Death of Mary II 322 

Policy of Marlboroogh after the Death of Mary 328 

Robert Charnock and his Accomplices 331 

Marshall, the Duke of Villeroy 334 



MACAULAY'S MISCELLANIES. 



FKANCIS ATTEKBUEY. 

Francis Atterbury, a man who holds a conspicuous place 
in the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of Eng- 
land, was born in the year 1662, at Middleton, in Buck- 
inghamshire, a parish of which his father was rector. 
Francis was educated at Westminster School, and carried 
thence to Christ Church a stock of learning which, though 
really scanty, he through life exhibited with such judicious 
ostentation that superficial observers believed his attain- 
ments to be immense. At Oxford, his parts, his taste, 
and his bold, contemptuous, and imperious spirit soon made 
him conspicuous. Here he published, at twenty, his first 
work, a translation of the noble poem of Absalom and 
Ahithophel into Latin verse. Neither the style nor the ver- 
sification of the young scholar was that of the Augustan 
age. In English composition he succeeded much better. 
In 1687 he distinguished himself among many able men 
who wrote in defence of the Church of England, then per- 
secuted by James II., and calumniated by apostates who 
had for lucre quitted her communion. Among these apos- 
tates none was more active or malignant than Obadiah 
Walker, who was master of University College, and who 
had set up there, under the royal patronage, a press for 
printing tracts against the established religion. In one of 
these tracts, written apparently by Walker himself, many 
aspersions were thrown on Martin Luther. Atterbury un- 
dertook to defend the great Saxon reformer, and performed 



8 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

that task in a manner singularly characteristic. Whoever 
examines his reply to Walker will be struck by the con- 
trast between the feebleness of those parts which are argu- 
mentative and defensive, and the vigour of those parts 
which are rhetorical and aggressive. The Papists were so 
much galled by the sarcasms and invectives of the young 
polemic, that they raised a cry of treason, and accused him 
of having, by implication, called King James a Judas. 

After the Kevolution, Atterbury, though bred in the 
doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience, readily 
swore fealty to the new government. In no long time he 
took holy orders. He occasionally preached in London 
with an eloquence which raised his reputation, and soon 
had the honour of being appointed one of the royal chap- 
lains. But he ordinarily resided at Oxford, where he took 
an active part in academical business, directed the classical 
studies of the under-graduates of his college, and was the 
chief adviser and assistant of Dean Aldrich, a divine now 
chiefly remembered by his catches, but renowned among 
his contemporaries as a scholar, a Tory, and a high-church- 
man. It was the practice, not a very judicious practice, of 
Aldrich, to employ the most promising youths of his col- 
lege in editing Greek and Latin books. Among the stu- 
dious and well-disposed lads who were, unfortunately for 
themselves, induced to become teachers of philology when 
they should have been content to be learners, was Charles 
Boyle, son of the earl of Orrery, and nephew of Eobert 
Boyle, the great experimental philosopher. The task as- 
signed to Charles Boyle was to prepare a new edition of 
one of the most worthless books in existence. It was a 
fashion among those Greeks and Komans who cultivated 
rhetoric as an art, to compose epistles and harangues in 
the names of eminent men. Some of these counterfeits 
are fabricated with such exquisite taste and skill, that it 
is the highest achievement of criticism to distinguish them 
from originals. Others are so feebly and rudely executed 
that they can hardly impose on an intelligent schoolboy. 
The best specimen which has come down to us is perhaps 
the oration for Marceilus, such an imitation of Tully's 
eloquence as Tully would himself have read with wonder 
and delight. The worst specimen is perhaps a collection 



FEANCIS ATTEKBI7BY. 9 

of letters purporting to have been written by that Phalaris 
who governed Agrigentum more than 500 years before the 
Christian era. The evidence, both internal and external, 
against the genuineness of these letters is overwhelming. 
When, in the fifteenth century, they emerged, in company 
with much that was far more valuable, from their obscurity, 
they were pronounced spurious by Politian, the greatest 
scholar of Italy, and by Erasmus, the greatest scholar on 
our side- of the Alps. In truth, it would be as easy to 
persuade an educated Englishman, that one of Johnson's 
Eamblers was the work of William Wallace, as to per- 
suade a man like Erasmus, that a pedantic exercise, com- 
posed in the trim and artificial Attic of the time of Julian, 
was a despatch written by a crafty and ferocious Dorian, 
who roasted people alive many years before there existed 
a volume of prose in the Greek language. But though 
Christ Church could boast of many good Latinists, of 
many good English writers, and of a greater number of 
clever and fashionable men of the world than belonged to 
any other academic body, there was not then in the col- 
lege a single man capable of distinguishing between the 
infancy and the dotage of Greek literature. So superfi- 
cial, indeed, was the learning of the rulers of this cele- 
brated society, that they were charmed by an essay which 
Sir William Temple published in praise of the ancient 
writers. It now seems strange, that even the eminent 
public services, the deserved popularity, and the graceful 
style of Temple, should have saved so silly a perform- 
ance from universal contempt. Of the books which he 
most vehemently eulogized, his eulogies proved that he 
knew nothing. In fact, he could not read a line of the 
language in which they were written. Among many other 
foolish things, he said that the letters of Phalaris were the 
oldest letters and also the best in the world. Whatever 
Temple wrote attracted notice. People who had never 
heard of the Epistles of Phalaris, began to inquire about 
them. Aldrich, who knew very little of Greek, took the 
word of Temple, who knew none, and desired Boyle to 
prepare a new edition of these admirable compositions 
which, having long slept in obscurity, had become on a 
sudden objects of general interest. 



10 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

The edition was prepared with the help of Atterbury, 
who was Boyle's tutor, and of some other members of the 
college. It was an edition such as might be expected 
from people who would stoop to edit such a book. The 
notes were worthy of the text ; the Latin version worthy 
of the Greek original. The volume would have been for- 
gotten in a month, had not a misunderstanding about a 
manuscript arisen between the young editor and the great- 
est scholar that had appeared in Europe since the revival 
of letters, Kichard Bentley. The manuscript was in 
Bentley's keeping. Boyle wished it to be collated. A 
mischief-making bookseller informed him that Bentley 
had refused to lend it, which was false, and also that 
Bentley had spoken contemptuously of the letters attrib- 
uted to Phalaris, and of the critics who were taken in by 
such counterfeits, which was perfectly true. Boyle, much 
provoked, paid, in his preface, a bitterly ironical compli- 
ment to Bentley's courtesy. Bentley revenged himself by 
a short dissertation, in which he proved that the epistles 
were spurious, and the new edition of them worthless : but 
he treated Boyle personally with civility as a young gen- 
tleman of great hopes, whose love of learning was highly 
commendable, and who deserved to have had better in- 
structors. 

Few things in literary history are more extraordinary 
than the storm which this little dissertation raised. Bent- 
ley had treated Boyle with forbearance ; but he had treat- 
ed Christ Church with contempt ; and the Christ-Church- 
men, wherever dispersed, were as much attached to their 
college as a Scotchman to his country, or a Jesuit to his 
order. Their influence was great. They were dominant 
at Oxford, powerful in the Inns of Court and in the Col- 
lege of Physicians, conspicuous in parliament and in the 
literary and fashionable circles of London. Their unani- 
mous cry was, that the honour of the college must be vin- 
dicated, that the insolent Cambridge pedant must be put 
down. Poor Boyle was unequal to the task, and disin- 
clined to it. It was, therefore, assigned to his tutor 
Atterbury. 

The answer to Bentley, which bears the name of Boyle, 
but which was, in truth, no more the work of Boyle than 



FRANCIS ATTERBTOY. 11 

the letters to which the controversy related were the work 
of Phalaris, is now read only by the curious, and will in 
all probability never be reprinted again. But it had its 
day of noisy popularity. It was to be found not only in 
the studies of men of letters, but on the tables of the 
most brilliant drawing-rooms of Soho Square and Covent 
Garden. Even the beaus and coquettes of that age, the 
Wildairs and the Lady Lurewells, the Mirabels, and the 
Millamants, congratulated each other on the way in which 
the gay young gentleman, whose erudition sate so easily 
upon him, and who wrote with so much pleasantry ^and 
good breeding about the Attic dialect and the anapaestic 
measure, Sicilian talents and Thericlean cups, had ban- 
tered the queer prig of a doctor. Nor was the applause of 
the multitude undeserved. The book is, indeed, Atter- 
bury's masterpiece, and gives a higher notion of his pow- 
ers than any of those works to which he put his name. 
That he was altogether in the wrong on the main ques- 
tion, and on all the collateral questions springing oat of 
it, that his knowledge of the language, the literature and 
the history of Greece, was not equal to what many fresh- 
men now bring up every year to Cambridge and Oxford, 
and that some of his blunders seem rather to deserve a 
flogging than a refutation, is true ; and therefore it is that 
his performance is, in the highest degree, interesting and 
valuable to a judicious reader. It is good by reason of its 
exceeding badness. It is the most extraordinary instance 
that exists, of the art of making much show with little 
substance. There is no difficulty, says the steward of 
Moliere's miser, in giving a fine dinner with plenty of 
money : the really great cook is he who can set out a ban- 
quet with no money at all. That Bentley should have 
written excellently on ancient chronology and geography, 
on the development of the Greek language, and the origin 
of the Greek drama, is not strange. But that Atterbury 
should, during some years, have been thought to have 
treated these subjects much better than Bentley, is strange 
indeed. It is true that the champion of Christ Church 
had all the help which the most celebrated members of 
that society could give him. Smalridge contributed some 
very good wit ; Friend and others some very bad archseol- 



12 macaulay's miscellaneous WErrmGS. 

ogy and philology. But the greater part of the volume 
was entirely Atterbury's : what was not his own was re- 
vised and retouched by him; and the whole bears the 
mark of his mind, a mind inexhaustibly rich in all the 
resources of controversy, and familiar with all the artifices 
which make falsehood look like truth, and ignorance like 
knowledge. He had little gold ; but he beat that little 
out to the very thinnest leaf, and spread it over so vast a 
surface, that to those who judged by a glance, and who 
did not resort to balances and tests, the glittering heap of 
worthless matter which he produced seemed to be an ines- 
timable treasure of massy bullion. Such arguments as he 
had he placed in the clearest light. Where he had no 
arguments, he resorted to personalities, sometimes serious, 
generally ludicrous, always clever and cutting. But, 
whether he was grave or merry, whether he reasoned or 
sneered, his style was always pure, polished, and easy. 

Party-spirit then ran high ; yet, though Bentley ranked 
among Whigs, and Christ Church was a stronghold of 
Toryism, Whigs joined with Tories in applauding Atter- 
bury's volume. Garth insulted Bentley, and extolled 
Boyle in lines which are now never quoted except to be 
laughed at. Swift, in his Battle of the Books, introduced 
with much pleasantry Boyle, clad in armour, the gift of 
all the gods, and directed by Apollo in the form of a hu- 
man friend, for whose name a blank is left which may 
easily be filled up. The youth, so accoutred and so assist- 
ed, gains an easy victory over his uncourteous and boastful 
antagonist. Bentley, meanwhile, was supported by the 
consciousness of an immeasurable superiority, and encour- 
aged by the voices of the few who were really competent 
to judge the combat. "No man," he said, justly and 
nobly, "was ever written down but by himself." He 
spent two years in preparing a reply, which will never 
cease to be read and prized while the literature of ancient 
Greece is studied in any part of the wwld. This reply 
proved not only that the letters ascribed to Phalaris were 
spurious, but that Atterbury, with all his wit, his elo- 
quence, his skill in controversial fence, was the most au- 
dacious pretender that ever wrote about what he did not 
understand. But to Atterbury this exposure was matter 



b 



FRANCIS ATTERBURY. 13 

of indifference. He was now engaged in a dispute about 
matters far more important and exciting than the laws of 
Zaleucus and the laws of Charondas. The rage of reli- 
gious factions was extreme. High church and low church 
divided the nation. The great majority of the clergy 
were on the high church side ; the majority of King 
William's bishops were inclined to latitudinarianism. A 
dispute arose between the two parties touching the extent 
of the powers of the Lower House of Convocation. Atter- 
bury thrust himself eagerly into the front rank of the 
high-churchmen. Those who take a comprehensive and 
impartial view of his whole career, will not be disposed to 
give him credit for religious zeal. But it was his nature 
to be vehement and pugnacious in the cause of every fra- 
ternity of which he was a member. He had defended the 
genuineness of a spurious book, simply because Christ 
Church had put forth an edition of that book ; he now 
stood up for the clergy against the civil power, simply be- 
cause he was a clergyman, and for the priests against the 
episcopal order, simply because he was as yet only a priest. 
He asserted the pretensions of the class to which he be- 
longed, in several treatises written with much wit, ingenu- 
ity, audacity, and acrimony. In this, as in his first con- 
troversy, he was opposed to antagonists whose know- 
ledge of the subject in dispute was far superior to 
his ; but in this, as in his first controversy, he imposed 
on the multitude by bold assertion, by sarcasm, by 
declamation, and, above all, by his peculiar knack of 
exhibiting a little erudition in such a manner as to 
make it look like a great deal. Having passed himself 
off on the world as a greater master of classical learning 
than Bentley, he now passed himself off as a greater mas- 
ter of ecclesiastical learning than Wake or Gibson. By 
the great body of the clergy he was regarded as the ablest 
and most intrepid tribune that had ever defended their 
rights against the oligarchy of prelates. The Lower 
House of Convocation voted him thanks for his services ; 
the University of Oxford created him a Doctor of Divin- 
ity ; and soon after the accession of Anne, while the Tories 
still had the chief weight in the government, he was pro- 
moted to the deanery of Carlisle, 



14 macaulay's miscellaneous whitings. 

Soon after he had obtained this preferment, the Whig 
party rose to ascendancy in the state. From that party 
he could expect no favour. Six years elapsed before a 
change of fortune took place. At length, in the year 
1710, the prosecution of Sacheverell produced a formida- 
ble explosion of high-church fanaticism. At such a mo- 
ment Atterbury could not fail to be conspicuous. His 
inordinate zeal for the body to which he belonged, his tur- 
bulent and aspiring temper, his rare talents for agitation 
and for controversy were again signally displayed. He 
bore a chief part in framing that artft.1 and eloquent 
speech which the accused divine pronounced at the bar of 
the Lords, and which presents a singular contrast to the 
absurd and scurrilous sermon which had very unwisely 
been honoured with impeachment. Puring the troubled 
and anxious months which followed the trial, Atterbury 
was among the most active of those pamphleteers who in- 
flamed the nation against the Whig ministry and the 
Whig parliament. When the ministry had been changed 
and the parliament dissolved, rewards were showered upon 
him. The Lower House of Convocation elected him pro- 
locutor. The Queen appointed him Dean of Christ 
Church on the death of his old friend and patron Aldrich. 
The college would have preferred a gentler ruler. Never- 
theless, the new head was received with every mark of 
honour. A congratulatory oration in Latin was addressed 
to him in the magnificent vestibule of the hall ; and he in 
reply professed the warmest attachment to the venerable 
house in which he had been educated, and paid many gra- 
cious compliments to those over whom he was to preside. 
But it was not in his nature to be a mild or an equitable 
governor. He had left the chapter of Carlisle distracted 
by quarrels. He found Christ Church at peace ; but in 
three months his despotic and contentious temper did at 
Christ Church what it had done at Carlisle. He was suc- 
ceeded in both his deaneries by the humane and accom- 
plished Smalridge, who gently complained of the state in 
which both had been left. " Atterbury goes before, and 
sets everything on fire. I come after him with a bucket 
of water." It was said by Atterbury's enemies that he 
was made a bishop because he was so bad a dean. Under 



FRANCIS ATTERBURY. 15 

his administration Christ Church was in confusion, scan- 
dalous altercations took place, opprobrious words were ex- 
changed ; and there was reason to fear that the great Tory 
college would be ruined by the tyranny of the great Tory 
doctor. He was soon removed to the bishopric of Boches- 
ter, which was then always united with the deanery of 
Westminster. Still higher dignities seemed to be before 
him. For, though there were many able men on the 
Episcopal bench, there was none who equalled or ap- 
proached him in parliamentary talents. Had his party 
continued in power, it is not improbable that he would 
have been raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury. The 
more splendid his prospects, the more reason he had to 
dread the accession of a family which was well known to 
be partial to the Whigs. There is every reason to believe 
that he was one of those politicians who hoped that they 
might be able, during the life of Anne, to prepare matters 
in such a way that at her decease there might be little 
difficulty in setting aside the Act of Settlement and pla- 
cing the Pretender on the throne. Her sudden death con- 
founded the projects of these conspirators. Atterbury, 
who wanted no kind of courage, implored his confederates 
to proclaim James III., and offered to accompany the her- 
alds in lawn sleeves. But he found even the bravest sol- 
diers of his party irresolute, and exclaimed, not, it is said, 
without interjections which ill became the mouth of a 
father of the church, that the best of all causes and the 
most precious of all moments had been pusillanimously 
thrown away. He acquiesced in what he could not pre- 
vent, took the oaths to the house of Hanover, and at the 
coronation officiated with the outward show of zeal, and 
did his best to ingratiate himself with the royal family. 
But his servility was requited with cold contempt. No 
creature is so revengeful as a proud man who has humbled 
himself in vain. Atterbury became the most factious and 
pertinacious of all the opponents of the government. In 
the House of Lords, his oratory, lucid, pointed, lively, and 
set off with every grace of pronunciation and of gesture, 
extorted the attention and admiration even of a hostile 
majority. Some of the most remarkable protests which 
appear in the journals of the peers were drawn up by him ; 



16 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

and, in some of the bitterest of those pamphlets which 
called on the English to stand up for their country against 
the aliens who had come from beyond the seas to oppress 
and plunder her, critics easily detected his style. When 
the rebellion of 1715 broke out, he refused to sign the 
paper in which the bishops of the province of Canter- 
bury declared their attachment to the Protestant succes- 
sion. He busied himself in electioneering, especially at 
Westminster, where as dean he possessed great influ- 
ence ; and was, indeed, strongly suspected of having 
once set on a riotous mob to prevent his Whig fellow-citi- 
zens from polling. 

After having been long in indirect communication with 
the exiled family, he, in 1717, began to correspond direct- 
ly with the pretender. The first letter of the correspond- 
ence is extant. In that letter Atterbury boasts of having, 
during many years past, neglected no opportunity of serv- 
ing the Jacobite cause. " My daily prayer," he says, " is 
that you may have success. May I live to see that day, 
and live no longer than I do what is in my power to for- 
ward it." It is to be remembered that he who wrote thus 
was a man bound to set to the church of which he was over- 
seer an example of strict probity ; that he had repeatedly 
sworn allegiance to the House of Brunswick; that he had 
assisted in placing the crown on the head of George L, 
and that he had abjured James III., "without equivoca- 
tion or mental reservation, on the true faith of a Christian." 

It is agreeable to turn from his public to his private 
life. His turbulent spirit, wearied with faction and trea- 
son, now and then required repose, and found it in domes- 
tic endearments, and in the society of the most illustrious 
of the living and of the dead. Of his wife little is 
known : but between him and his daughter there was an 
affection singularly close and tender. The gentleness of 
his manners when he was in the company of a few friends, 
was such as seemed hardly credible to those who knew him 
only by his writings and speeches. The charm of his 
" softer hour " has been commemorated by one of those 
friends in imperishable verse. Though Atterbury's classi- 
cal attainments were not great, his taste in English liter- 
ature was excellent ; and his admiration of genius was so 



FRANCIS ATTERBURY. - 17 

strong, that it overpowered even his political and religious 
antipathies. His fondness for Milton, the mortal enemy 
of the Stuarts and of the church, was such as to many 
Tories seemed a crime. On the sad night on which Ad- 
dison was laid in the chapel of Henry VII., the "Westmin- 
ster boys remarked that Atterbury read the funeral service 
with a peculiar tenderness and solemnity. The favourite 
companions, however, of the great Tory prelate were, as 
might have been expected, men whose politics had at least 
a tinge of Toryism. He lived on friendly terms with 
Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay. With Prior he had a close 
intimacy, which some misunderstanding about public 
affairs at last dissolved. Pope found in Atterbury not only 
a warm admirer, but a most faithful, fearless, and judi- 
cious adviser. The poet was a frequent guest at the epis- 
copal palace among the elms of Bromley, and entertained 
not the slightest suspicion that his host, now declining in 
years, confined to an easy chair by gout, and apparently 
devoted to literature, was deeply concerned in criminal 
and perilous designs against the government. 

The spirit of the Jacobites had been cowed by the 
events of 1715. It revived in 1721. The failure of the 
South Sea project, the panic in the money market, the 
downfall of great commercial houses, the distress from 
which no part of the kingdom was exempt, had produced 
general discontent. It seemed not improbable that at 
such a moment an insurrection might be successful. An 
insurrection was planned. The streets of London were to 
be barricaded ; the Tower and the Bank were to be sur- 
prised; King George, his family, and his chief captains 
and councillors were to be arrested, and King James was 
to be proclaimed. The design became known to the Duke 
of Orleans, Kegent of France, who was on terms of friend- 
ship with the House of Hanover. He put the English 
government on its guard. Some of the chief malcontents 
were committed to prison ; and among them was Atter- 
bury. No bishop of the Church of England had been 
taken into custody since that memorable day when the 
applauses and prayers of all London had followed the 
seven bishops to the gate of the Tower. The Opposition 
entertained some hope that it might be possible to excite 



18 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

among the people an enthusiasm resembling that of their 
fathers, who rushed into the waters of the Thames to im- 
plore the blessing of Sancroft. Pictures of the heroic 
confessor in his cell were exhibited at the shop windows. 
Verses in his praise were sung about the streets. The re- 
straints by which he was prevented from communicating 
with his accomplices were represented as cruelties worthy 
of the dungeons of the inquisition. Strong appeals were 
made to the priesthood. Would they tamely permit so 
gross an insult to be offered to their cloth 1 Would they 
suffer the ablest, the most eloquent member of their pro- 
fession, the man who had so often stood up for their rights 
against the civil power, to be treated like the vilest of 
mankind? There was considerable excitement; but it 
was allayed by a temperate and artful letter to the clergy, 
the work, in all probability, of Bishop Gibscn, who stood 
high in the favour of Walpole, and shortly after became 
minister for ecclesiastical affairs. 

Atterbury remained in close confinement during some 
months. He had carried on his correspondence with the 
exiled family so cautiously, that the circumstantial proofs 
of his guilt, though sufficient to produce entire moral con- 
viction, were not sufficient to justify legal conviction. He 
could be reached only by a bill of pains and penalties. 
Such a bill the Whig party, then decidedly predominant 
in both houses, was quite prepared to support. Many hot- 
headed members of that party were eager to follow the 
precedent which had been set in the case of Sir John Fen- 
wick, and to pass an act for cutting off the bishop's head. 
Cadogan, who commanded the army, a brave soldier, but 
a headstrong politician, is said to have exclaimed with 
great vehemence : " Fling him to the lions in the Tower." 
But the wiser and more humane Walpole was always un- 
willing to shed blood ; and his influence prevailed. When 
parliament met, the evidence against the bishop was laid 
before committees of both houses. Those committees re- 
ported that his guilt was proved. In the Commons a 
resolution, pronouncing him a traitor, was carried by near- 
ly two to one. A bill was then introduced which provided 
that he should be deprived of his spiritual dignities, that 
he should be banished for life, and that no British subject 



FRANCIS ATTERBURY. 19 

should hold any intercourse with him except by the royal 
permission. 

This bill passed the Commons with little difficulty. 
For the bishop, though invited to defend himself, chose to 
reserve his defence for the assembly of which he was a 
member. In the Lords the contest was sharp. The young 
Duke of Wharton, distinguished by his parts, his disso- 
luteness, and his versatility, spoke for Atterbury with 
great effect ; and Atterbury' s own voice was heard for the 
last time by that unfriendly audience which had so often 
listened to him with mingled aversion and delight. He 
produced few witnesses, nor did those witnesses say much 
that could be of service to him. Among them was Pope. 
He was called to prove that, while he was an inmate of 
the palace at Bromley, the bishop's time was completely 
occupied by literary and domestic matters, and that no 
leisure was left for plotting. But Pope, who was quite 
unaccustomed to speak in public, lost his head, and, as he 
afterwards owned, though he had only ten words to say, 
made two or three blunders. 

The bill finally passed the Lords by eighty-three votes 
to forty-three. The bishops, with a single exception, were 
in the majority. Their conduct drew on them a sharp 
taunt from Lord Bathurst, a warm friend of Atterbury, 
and a zealous Tory. " The wild Indians," he said, " give 
no quarter, because they believe that they shall inherit the 
skill and prowess of every adversary whom they destroy. 
Perhaps the animosity of the right reverend prelates to 
their brother may be explained in the same way." 

Atterbury took leave of those whom he loved with a 
dignity and tenderness worthy of a better man. Three 
fine lines of his favourite poet were often in his mouth : — 

11 Some natural tears he dropped, but wiped them soon: 
The world was all before him, where to chuse 
His place of rest, and providence his guide.'* 

At parting, he presented Pope with a Bible, and said 
with a disingenuousness of which no man who had studied 
the Bible to much purpose would have been guilty : "If 
ever you learn that I have any dealings with the Pre- 



20 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

tender, I give you leave to say that my punishment is just." 
Pope at this time really believed the bishop to be an in- 
jured man. Arbuthnot seems to have been of the same 
opinion. Swift, a few months later, ridiculed with great 
bitterness, in the voyage to Lapute, the evidence which 
had satisfied the two houses of parliament. Soon, how- 
ever, the most partial friends of the banished prelate ceased 
to assert his innocence, and contented themselves with 
lamenting and excusing what they could not defend. 
After a short stay at Brussels, he had taken up his abode 
at Paris, and had become the leading man among the 
Jacobite refugees who were assembled there. He was in- 
vited to Eome by the Pretender, who then held his mock 
court under the immediate protection of the Pope. But 
Atterbury felt that a bishop of the Church of England 
would be strangely out of place at the Vatican, and de- 
clined the invitation. During some months, however, he 
might flatter himself that he stood high in the good graces 
of James. The correspondence between the master and 
the servant was constant. Atterbury' s merits were warm- 
ly acknowledged, his advice was respectfully received, and 
he was, as Bolingbroke had been before him, the prime 
minister of a king without a kingdom. But the new 
favourite found, as Bolingbroke had found before him, that 
it was quite as hard to keep the shadow of power under a 
vagrant and mendicant prince as to keep the reality of 
power at Westminster. Though James had neither terri- 
tories nor revenues, neither army nor navy, there was more 
faction and more intrigue among his courtiers than among 
those of his successful rival. Atterbury soon perceived 
that his counsels were disregarded, if not distrusted. His 
proud spirit was deeply wounded. He quitted Paris, fixed 
his residence at Montpelier, gave up politics, and devoted 
himself entirely to letters. In the sixth year of his exile 
he had so severe an illness that his daughter, herself in 
very delicate health, determined to run all risks that she 
might see him once more. Having obtained a license from 
the English government, she went by sea to Bordeaux, but 
landed there in such a state that she could travel only by 
boat or in a litter. Her father, in spite of his infirmities, 
set out from Montpelier to meet her ; and she, with the 



FRANCIS ATTERBUEY. 21 

impatience which is often the sign of approaching death, 
hastened towards him. Those who were about her in vain 
implored her to travel slowly. She said that every hour 
was precious, that she only wished to see her papa and to 
die. She met him at Toulouse, embraced him, received 
from his hand the sacred bread and wine, and thanked 
God that they had passed one day in each other's society 
before they parted for ever. She died that night. 

It was some time before even the strong mind of At- 
terbury recovered from this cruel blow. As soon as he 
was himself again, he became eager for action and con- 
flict : for grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, 
to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits 
more restless. The Pretender, dull and bigoted as he was, 
had found out that he had not acted wisely in parting 
with one who, though a heretic, was, in abilities and ac- 
complishments, the foremost man of the Jacobite party. 
The bishop was courted back, and was without much diffi- 
culty induced to return to Paris and to become once more 
the phantom minister of a phantom monarchy. But his 
long and troubled life was drawing to a close. To the 
last, however, his intellect retained all its keenness and 
vigour. He learned, in the ninth year of his banishment, 
that he had been accused by Oldmixon, as dishonest and 
malignant a scribbler as any that has been saved from 
oblivion by the Dunciad, of having, in concert with other 
Christ Churchmen, garbled Clarendon's History of the 
Eebellion. The charge, as respected Atterbury, had not 
the slightest foundation : for he was not one of the editors 
of the History, and never saw it till it was printed. He 
published a short vindication of himself, which is a model 
in its kind, luminous, temperate, and dignified. A copy 
of this little work he sent to the Pretender, with a letter 
singularly eloquent and graceful. It was impossible, the 
old man said, that he should write anything on such a sub- 
ject without beng reminded of the resemblance between 
his own fate and that of Clarendon. They were the only 
two English subjects that had ever been banished from 
their country, and debarred from all communication with 
their friends by act of parliament. But here the resem- 
blance ended. One of the exiles had been so happy as to 



22 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

bear a chief part in the restoration of the Koyal house. 
All that the other could now do was to die asserting the 
rights of that house to the last. A few weeks after this 
letter was written Atterbury died. He had just completed 
his seventieth year. 

His body was brought to England, and laid, with great 
privacy, under the nave of Westminster Abbey. Only 
three mourners followed the coffin. No inscription marks 
the grave. That the epitaph with which Pope honoured 
the memory of his friend, does not appear on the walls of 
the great national cemetery, is no subject of regret : for 
nothing worse was ever written by Colley Cibber. 

Those who wish for more complete information about 
Atterbury, may easily collect it from his sermons and his 
controversial writings, from the report of the parliament- 
ary proceedings against him, which will be found in the 
State Trials ; from the five volumes of his correspondence, 
edited by Mr. Nichols, and from the first volume of the 
Stuart papers, edited by Mr. Glover. A very indulgent 
but a very interesting account of the Bishop's political ca- 
reer, will be found in Lord Mahon's valuable History of 
England. 



JOHN BUNYAN. 



John Bunyan, the most popular religious writer in the 
English language, was born at Elstow, about a mile from 
Bedford, in the year 1628. He may be said to have been 
born a tinker. The tinkers then formed a hereditary 
caste, which was held in no high estimation. They were 
generally vagrants and pilferers, and were often confound- 
ed with the gipsies, whom in truth they nearly resembled. 
Bunyan's father was more respectable than most of the 
tribe. He had a fixed residence, and was able to send his 
son to a village school, where reading and writing were 
taught. 

The years of John's boyhood were those during which 
the puritan spirit was in the highest vigour all over Eng- 



JOHN BUNYAN. 23 

land ; and nowhere had that spirit more influence than in 
Bedfordshire. It is not wonderful, therefore, that a lad to 
whom nature had given a powerful imagination and sensi- 
bility which amounted to a disease, should have been early 
haunted by religious terrors. Before he was ten, his 
sports were interrupted by fits of remorse and despair ; 
and his sleep was disturbed by dreams of fiends trying to 
fly away with him. As he grew older, his mental conflicts 
became still more violent. The strong language in which 
he described them has strangely misled all his biographers 
except Mr. Southey. It has long been an ordinary prac- 
tice with pious writers to cite Bunyan as an instance of 
the supernatural power of divine grace to rescue the human 
soul from the lowest depths of wickedness. He is called 
in one book the most notorious of profligates ; in another, 
the brand plucked from the burning. He is designated in 
Mr. Ivimey's History of the Baptists, as the depraved 
Bunyan, the wicked tinker of Elstow. Mr. Eyland, a man 
once of great note among the Dissenters, breaks out into 
the following rhapsody : — " No man of common sense and 
common integrity can deny that Bunyan was a practical 
atheist, a worthless, contemptible infidel, a vile rebel to God 
and goodness, a common profligate, a soul-despising, a soul- 
murdering, a soul-damning, thoughtless wretch as could ex- 
ist on the face of the earth. Now be astonished, heavens, 
to eternity ! and wonder, earth and hell ! while time en- 
dures. Behold this very man become a miracle of mercy, a 
mirror of wisdom, goodness, holiness, truth, and love." 
But whoever takes the trouble to examine the evidence, will 
find that the good men who wrote this had been deceived 
by a phraseology which, as they had been hearing it and 
using it all their lives, they ought to have understood bet- 
ter. There cannot be a greater mistake than to infer from 
the strong expressions in which a devout man bemoans his 
exceeding sinfulness, that he has led a worse life than his 
neighbours. Many excellent persons, whose moral char- 
acter from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain 
discernible to their fellow creatures, have, in ther autobio- 
graphies and diaries, applied to themselves, and doubtless 
with sincerity, epithets as severe as could be applied to 
Titus Oates or Mrs. Brownrigg. It is quite certain that 



24 macaulay's miscellaneous whitings. 

Bunyan was, at eighteen, what, in any but the most aus- 
terely puritanical circles, would have been considered as a 
young man of singular gravity and innocence. Indeed, it 
may be remarked that he, like many other penitents who, 
in general terms, acknowledge themselves to have been 
the worst of mankind, fired up, and stood vigorously on 
his defence, whenever any particular charge was brought 
against him by others. He declares, it is true, that he 
had let loose the reins on the neck of his lusts, that he 
had delighted in all transgresions against the divine law, 
and that he had been the ringleader of the youth of 
Elstow in all manner of vice. But when those who wished 
him ill accused him of licentious amours, he called on God 
and the angels to attest his purity. No woman, he said, 
in heaven, earth, or hell, could charge him with having 
ever made any improper advances to her. Not only had 
he been strictly faithful to his wife ; but he had, even be- 
fore his marriage, been perfectly spotless. It does not 
appear from his own confessions, or from the railings of 
his enemies, that he ever was drunk in his life. One bad 
habit he contracted, that of using profane language ; but 
he tells us that a single reproof cured him so effectually 
that he never offended again. The worst that can be laid 
to the charge of this poor youth, whom it has been tho 
fashion to represent as the most desperate of reprobates, 
as a village Kochester, is that he had a great liking for 
some diversions^ quite harmless in themselves, but con- 
demned by the rigid precisians among whom he lived, and 
for whose opinion he had a great respect. The four chief 
sins of which he was guilty were dancing, ringing the 
bells of the parish church, playing at tipcat, and reading 
the History of Sir Bevis of Southampton. A Kector of 
the school of Laud would have held such a young man up 
to the whole parish as a model. But Bunyan's notions of 
good and evil had been learned in a very different school ; 
and he was made miserable by the conflict between his 
tastes and his scruples. 

When he was about seventeen, the ordinar^course of 

his life was interrupted by an event which gave a lasting 

color to his thoughts. He enlisted in the parliamentary 

•army, and served during the decisive campaign of 1645. 



JOHN BUKYA2T. 25 

All that we know of his military career is that, at the 
siege of Leicester, one of his comrades, who had taken his 
post, was killed by a shot from the town. Bunyan ever 
after considered himself as having been saved from death 
by the special interference of Providence. It may be ob- 
served, that his imagination was strongly impressed by the 
glimpse which he had caught of the pomp of war. To 
the last he loved to draw his illustrations of sacred things 
from camps and fortresses, from guns, drums, trumpets, 
flags of truce, and regiments arrayed, each under its own 
banner. His Greatheart, his Captain Boanerges, and his 
Captain Credence, are evidently portraits, of which the 
originals were among those martial saints who fought and 
expounded in Fairfax's army. 

In a few months Bunyan returned home, and married. 
His wife had some pious relations, and brought him as her 
only portion some pious books. And now his mind, ex- 
citable by nature, very imperfectly disciplined by educa- 
tion, and exposed, without any protection, to the infectious 
virulence of the enthusiasm which was then epidemic in 
England, began to be fearfully disordered. In outward 
things he soon became a strict Pharisee. He was constant 
in attendance at prayers and sermons. His favourite 
amusements were, one after another, relinquished, though 
not without many painful struggles. In the middle of a 
game at tipcat he paused, and stood staring wildly up- 
wards with his stick in his hand. He had heard a voice 
asking him whether he would leave his sins and go to 
heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell ; and he had seen 
an awful countenance frowning on him from the sky. The 
odious vice of bell-ringing he renounced ; but he still for 
a time ventured to go to the church tower and look on 
while others pulled the ropes. But soon the thought 
struck him that, if he persisted in such wickedness, the 
steeple would fall on his head ; and he fled in terror from 
the accursed place. To give up dancing on the village 
green was still harder ; and some months elapsed before 
he had +he fortitude to part with this darling sin. When 
this last sacrifice had been made, he was, even when tried 
by the maxims of that austere time, faultless. All Elstow 
talked of him as an eminently pious youth. But his own 
2 



26 macatjlay's miscellaneous whitings* 

mind was more unquiet than ever. Having nothing more 
to do in the way of visible reformation, yet finding in re- 
ligion no pleasures to supply the place of the juvenile 
amusements which he had relinquished, he began to ap- 
prehend that he lay under some special malediction ; and 
he was tormented by a succession of fantasies which seemed 
likely to drive him to suicide or to Bedlam. 

At one time he took it into his head that all persons 
of Israelite blood would be saved, and tried to make out 
that he partook of that blood ; but his hopes were speedily 
destroyed by his father, who seems to have had no ambi- 
tion to be regarded as a Jew. 

At another time Bunyan was disturbed by a strange 
dilemma : " If I have not faith, I am lost ; if I have faith, 
I can work miracles/' He was tempted to cry to the pud- 
dles between Elstow and Bedford, " Be ye dry," and to 
stake his eternal hopes on the event. 

Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for 
Bedford and the neighbouring villages was past ; that all 
who were to be saved in that part of England were already 
converted ; and that he had begun to pray and strive some 
months too late. 

Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks 
were not in the right, and the Christians in the wrong. 
Then he was troubled by a maniacal impulse which 
prompted him to pray to the trees, to a broomstick, to the 
parish bull. As yet, however, he was only entering the 
Valley of the Shadow of Death. Soon the darkness grew 
thicker. Hideous forms floated before him. Sounds of 
cursing and wailing were in his ears. His way ran 
through stench and fire, close to the mouth of the bottom 
less pit. He began to be haunted by a strange curiosity 
about the unpardonable sin, and by a morbid longing to 
commit it. But the most frightful of all the forms which 
his disease took, was a propensity to utter blasphemy, and 
especially to renounce his share in the benefits of the re- 
demption. Night and day, in bed, at table, at work, evil 
spirits, as he imagined, were repeating close to his ear the 
words, " Sell him, sell him." He struck at the hobgob- 
lins ; he pushed them from him ; but still they were ever 
at his side. He cried out in answer to them, hour after 



JOHN BUNYAN. 27 

hour, " Never, never ; not for thousands of worlds ; not for 
thousands." At length, worn out by this long agony, he 
suffered the fatal words to escape him, " Let him go, if he 
will." Then his misery became more fearful than ever. 
He had done what could not be forgiven. He had for- 
feited his part of the great sacrifice. Like Esau, he had 
sold his birthright ; and there was no longer any place for 
repentance. "None," he afterwards wrote, "knows the 
terrors of those days but myself." He has described his 
sufferings with singular energy, simplicity, and pathos. 
He envied the brutes ; he envied the very stones in the 
street, and the tiles on the houses. The sun seemed to 
withhold its light and warmth from him. His body, 
though cast in a sturdy mould, and though still in the 
highest vigour of youth, trembled whole days together 
with the fear of death and judgment. He fancied that 
this trembling was the sign set on the worst reprobates, 
the sign which God had put on Cain. The unhappy 
man's emotion destroyed his power of digestion. He had 
such pains that he expected to burst asunder like Judas, 
whom he regarded as his prototype. 

Neither the books which Bunyan read, nor the advisers 
whom he consulted, were likely to do much good in a case 
like his. His small library had received a most unseason- 
able addition, the account of the lamentable end of Fran- 
cis Spira. One ancient man of high repute for piety, 
whom the sufferer consulted, gave an opinion which might 
well have produced fatal consequences. " I am afraid," 
said Bunyan, " that I have committed the sin against the 
Holy Ghost." " Indeed," said the old fanatic, " I am 
afraid that you have." 

At length the clouds broke ; the light became clearer 
and clearer ; and the enthusiast, who had imagined that he 
was branded with the mark of the first murderer, and des- 
tined to the end of the arch traitor, enjoyed peace and a 
cheerful confidence in the mercy of God. Years elapsed, 
however, before his nerves, which had been so perilously 
overstrained, recovered their tone. When he had joined a 
Baptist society at Bedford, and was for the first time ad- 
mitted to partake of the Eucharist, it was with difficulty 
that he could refrain from imprecating destruction on his 



28 macaulay's miscellaneous weitikgs. 

brethren while the cup was passing from hand to hand. 
After he had been some time a member of the congrega- 
tion, he began to preach ; and his sermons produced a 
powerful effect. He was indeed illiterate ; but he spoke 
to illiterate men. The severe training through which he 
had passed had given him such an experimental know- 
ledge of all the modes of religious melancholy as he could 
never have gathered from books ; and his vigorous ge- 
nius, animated by a fervent spirit of devotion, enabled him 
not only to exercise a great influence over the vulgar, but 
even to extort the half contemptuous admiration of schol- 
ars. Yet it was long before he ceased to be tormented by 
an impulse which urged him to utter words of horrible 
impiety in the pulpit. 

Counter-irritants are of as great use in moral as in 
physical diseases. It should seem that Bunyan was finally 
relieved from the internal sufferings which had embittered 
his life by sharp persecution from without. He had been 
five years a preacher, when the Kestoration put it in the 
power of the Cavalier gentlemen and clergymen all over 
the country to oppress the Dissenters ; and, of all the Dis- 
senters whose history is known to us, he was perhaps the 
most hardly treated. In November, 1660, he was flung 
into Bedford gaol ; and there he remained, with some in- 
tervals of partial and precarious liberty, during twelve 
years . His persecutors tried to extort from him a promise 
that he would abstain from preaching ; but he was con- 
vinced that he was divinely set apart and commissioned 
to be a teacher of righteousness, and he was fully deter- 
mined to obey God rather than man. He was brought 
before several tribunals, laughed at, caressed, reviled, 
menaced, but in vain. He was facetiously told that he 
was quite right in thinking that he ought not to hide his 
gift ; but that his real gift was skill in repairing old 
kettles. He was compared to Alexander the coppersmith. 
He was told that, if he would give up preaching, he should 
be instantly liberated. He was warned that, if he per- 
sisted in disobeying the law, he would be liable to banish- 
ment, and that, if he were found in England after a cer- 
tain time, his neck would be stretched. His answer was, 
" If you let me out to-day, I will preach again to-morrow." 



JOHN BUNYAX. 29 

Tear after year lie lay patiently in a dungeon, compared 
with which the worst prison now to be found in the Island 
is a palace. His fortitude is the more extraordinary, be- 
cause his domestic feelings were unusually strong. In- 
deed, he was considered by his stern brethren as somewhat 
too fond and indulgent a parent. He had several small 
children, and among them a daughter who was blind, and 
whom he loved with peculiar tenderness. He could not, 
he said, bear even to let the wind blow on her ; and now she 
must suffer cold and hunger ; she must beg ; she must be 
beaten ; " yet," he added, " I must, I must do it." While 
he lay in prison he could do nothing in the way of his old 
trade for the support of his family. He determined, 
therefore, to take up a new trade. He learned to make 
long tagged thread laces ; and many thousands of these 
articles were furnished by him to the hawkers. While his 
hands were thus busied, he had other employment for his 
mind and his lips. He gave religious instruction to his 
fellow-captives, and formed from among them a little 
flock, of which he was himself the pastor. He studied 
indefatigably the few books which he possessed. His two 
chief companions were the Bible and Fox's Book of Mar- 
tyrs. His knowledge of the Bible was such that he might 
have been called a living concordance ; and on the mar- 
gin of his copy of the Book of Martyrs are still legible 
the ill-spelt lines of doggrel in which he expressed his 
reverence for the brave sufferers, and his implacable en- 
mity to the mystical Babylon. 

At length he began to write, and, though it was some 
time before he discovered where his strength lay, his writ- 
ings were not unsuccessful. They were coarse, indeed, 
but they showed a keen mother wit, a great command of 
the homely mother tongue, an intimate knowledge of the 
English Bible, and a vast and dearly-bought spiritual ex- 
perience. They therefore, when the corrector of the press 
had improved the syntax and the spelling, were well re- 
ceived by the humbler class of Dissenters. 

Much of Bunyan's time was spent in controversy. He 
wrote sharply against the Quakers, whom he seems always 
to have held in utter abhorrence. It is, however, a re- 
markable fact, that he adopted one of their peculiar fash- 



30 MACAUXAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

ions : his practice was to write, not November or Decem- 
ber, but eleventh month and twelfth month. 

He wrote against the liturgy of the Church of Eng- 
land. No two things, according to him, had less affinity 
than the form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those, 
he said with much point, who have most of the spirit of 
prayer are all to be found in gaol ; and those who have 
most zeal for the form of prayer are all to be found at the. 
ale-house. The doctrinal articles, on the other hand, he 
warmly praised, and defended against some Arminian 
clergymen who had signed them. The most acrimonious 
of all his works is his answer to Edward Fowler, after- 
wards bishop of Gloucester, an excellent man, but not free 
from the taint of Pelagianism. 

Bunyan had also a dispute with some of the chiefs of 
the sect to which he belonged. He doubtless held with 
perfect sincerity the distinguishing tenet of that sect, but 
he did not consider that tenet as one of high importance, 
and willingly joined in communion with pious Presbyte- 
rians and Independents. The sterner Baptists, therefore, 
loudly pronounced him a false brother. A controversy 
arose which long survived the original combatants. In 
our own time the cause which Bunyan had defended with 
rude logic and rhetoric against Kiffin and Dan vers, was 
pleaded by Kobert Hall with an ingenuity and eloquence 
such as no polemical writer has ever surpassed. 

During the years which immediately followed the 
Eestoration, Bunyan's confinement seems to have been 
strict. But as the passions of 1660 cooled, as the hatred 
with which the Puritans had been regarded while their 
reign was recent gave place to pity, he was less and less 
harshly treated. The distress of his family, and his own 
patience, courage, and piety, softened the hearts of his 
persecutors. Like his own Christian in the cage, he found 
protectors even among the crowd of Vanity Fair. The 
Bishop of the diocese, Dr. Barlow, is said to have inter- 
ceded for him. At length the prisoner was suffered to 
pass most of his time beyond the walls of the gaol, on 
condition, as it should seem, that he remained within the 
town of Bedford. 

He owed his complete liberation to one of the worst 



JOHK BU^YAN. 31 

acts of one of the -worst governments that England has 
ever seen. In 1671 the Cabal was in power. Charles II. 
had concluded the treaty by which he bound himself to 
set up the Roman Catholic religion in England. The first 
step which he took towards that end was to annul, by an 
unconstitutional exercise of his prerogative, all the penal 
statutes against the Roman Catholics ; and, in order to 
disguise his real design, he annulled at the same time the 
penal statutes against Protestant nonconformists. Bunyan 
w T as consequently set at large. In the first warmth of 
his gratitude he published a tract in which he compared 
Charles to that humane and generous Persian king who, 
though not himself blessed with the light of the true reli- 
gion, favoured the chosen people, and permitted them,^ 
after years of captivity, to rebuild their beloved temple/ 
To candid men, w r ho consider how much Bunyan had suf- 
fered, and how little he could guess the secret designs of 
the court, the unsuspicious thankfulness with which he ac- 
cepted the precious boon of freedom will not appear to 
require any apology. 

Before he left his prison he had begun the book 
which has made his name immortal. The history of 
that book is remarkable. The author w T as, as he tells 
us, writing a treatise, in which he had occasion to 
speak of the stages of Christian progress. He compared 
that progress, as many others had compared it, to a pil- 
grimage. Soon his quick wit discovered innumerable 
points of similarity which had escaped his predecessors. 
Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could 
put them into words, quagmires and pits, steep hills, dark 
and horrible glens, soft vales, sunny pastures, a gloomy 
castle of which the court-yard was strewn with the skulls 
and bones of murdered prisoners, a town all bustle and 
splendour, like London on the Lord Mayor's Day, and the 
narrow path, straight as a rule could make it, running on 
up hill and down hill, through city and through wilder- 
ness, to the Black River and the Shining Gate. He had 
found out, as most people w T ould have said, by accident, as 
he would doubtless have said, by the guidance of Provi- 
dence, w T here his powders lay. He had no suspicion, in- 
deed, that he w T as producing a master-piece. He could not 



32 macaulay's miscellaneous weitings. 

guess what place his allegory would occupy in English lit- 
erature ; for of English literature he knew nothing. 
Those who suppose him to have studied the Fairy Queen 
might easily be confuted, if this were the proper place for 
a detailed examination of the passages in which the two 
allegories have been thought to resemble each other. The 
only work of fiction, in all probability, with which he could 
compare his pilgrim, was his old favourite, the legend of 
Sir Bevis of Southampton. He would have thought it a 
sin to borrow any time from the serious business of his 
life, from his expositions, his controversies, and his lace 
tags, for the purpose of amusing himself with what he 
considered merely as a trifle. It was only, he assures us, 
at spare moments, that he returned to the House Beauti- 
ful, the Delectable Mountains, and the Enchanted Ground. 
He had no assistance. Nobody but himself saw a line till 
the whole was complete. He then consulted his pious 
friends. Some were pleased. Others were much scandal- 
ized. It was a vain story, a mere romance, about giants, 
and lions, and goblins, and warriors, sometimes fighting 
with monsters, and sometimes regaled by fair ladies in 
stately palaces. The loose atheistical wits at Will's might 
write such stuff to divert the painted Jezebels of the 
court : but did it become a minister of the gospel to copy 
the evil fashions of the world? There had been a time 
when the cant of such fools would have made Bunyan mis- 
erable. But that time was passed ; and his mind was now 
in a firm and healthy state. He saw that, in employing 
fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, he was 
only following the example which every Christian ought 
to propose to himself; and he determined to print. 

The Pilgrim's Progress stole silently into the world. 
Not a single copy of the first edition is known to be in 
existence. The year of publication has not been ascer- 
tained. It is probable that, during some months, the lit- 
tle volume circulated only among poor and obscure secta- 
ries. But soon the irresistible charm of a book which 
gratified the imagination of the reader with all the action 
and scenery of a fairy tale, which exercised his ingenuity 
by setting him to discover a multitude of curious analo- 
gies, which interested his feelings for human beings, frail 



JOHN BTJNYAN. 33 

like himself, and struggling with temptations from within 
and from without, which every moment drew a smile from 
him by some stroke of quaint yet simple pleasantry, and 
nevertheless left on his mind a sentiment of reverence for 
God and of sympathy for man, began to produce its effect. 
In puritanical circles, from which plays and novels were 
strictly excluded, that effect was such as no work of ge- 
nius, though it were superior to the Iliad, to Don Quixote, 
or to Othello, can ever produce on a mind accustomed to 
indulge in literary luxury. In 1678 came forth a second 
edition with additions ; and then the demand became 
immense. In the four following years the book was re- 
printed six times. The eighth edition, which contains the 
last improvements made by the author, was published in 
1682, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685. The help of 
the engraver had early been called in ; and tens of thou- 
sands of children looked with terror and delight on exe- 
crable copperplates, which represented Christian thrusting 
his sword into Apollyon, or writhing in the grasp of Giant 
Despair. In Scotland, and in some of the colonies, the 
Pilgrim was even more popular than in his native country. 
Bunyan has told us, with very pardonable vanity, that in 
New England his dream was the daily subject of the con- 
versation of thousands, and was thought worthy to appear 
in the most superb binding. He had numerous admirers 
in Holland, and among the Huguenots of France. With 
the pleasures, however, he experienced some of the pains 
of eminence. Knavish booksellers put forth volumes of 
trash under his name, and envious scribblers maintained it 
to be impossible that the poor ignorant tinker should really 
be the author of the book which was called his. 

He took the best way to confound both those who coun- 
terfeited him and those who slandered him. He continued 
to work the Gold-field which he had discovered, and to 
draw from it new treasures, not, indeed, with quite such 
ease and in quite such abundance as when the precious 
soil was still virgin, but yet with success which left all 
competition far behind. In 1684 .appeared the second 
part of the Pilgrim's Progress. It was soon followed by 
the Holy War, which, if the Pilgrim's Progress did not 
exist, would be the best allegory that ever was written. 
2* 



34 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

Bunyan' s place in society was now very different from 
what it had been. There had been a time when many 
Dissenting ministers, who could talk Latin and read 
Greek, had affected to treat him with scorn. But his 
fame and influence now far exceeded theirs. He had so 
great an authority among the Baptists, that he was popu- 
larly called Bishop Bunyan. His episcopal visitations 
were annual. From Bedford he rode every year to Lon- 
don, and preached there to large and attentive congrega- 
tions. From London he went his circuit through the 
country, animating the zeal of his brethren, collecting and 
distributing alms, and making up quarrels. The magis- 
trates seem in general to have given him little trouble. 
But there is reason to believe that, in the year 1685, he 
was in some danger of again occupying his old quarters in 
Bedford gaol. In that year the rash and wicked enter- 
prise of Monmouth gave the government a pretext for 
prosecuting the nonconformists ; and scarcely one eminent 
divine of the Presbyterian, Independent, or Baptist per- 
suasion remained unmolested. Baxter was in prison : 
Howe was driven into exile : Henry was arrested. Two 
eminent Baptists, with whom Bunyan had been engaged 
in controversy, were in great peril and distress. Danvers 
was in danger of being hanged ; and Kiffin's grandsons 
were actually hanged. The tradition is that, during those 
evil days, Bunyan was forced to disguise himself as a 
waggoner, and that he preached to his congregation at 
Bedford in a smock-frock, with a cart-whip in his hand. 
But soon a great change took place. James the Second 
was at open war with the church, and found it necessary to 
court the Dissenters. Some of the creatures of the gov- 
ernment tried to secure the aid of Bunyan. They proba- 
bly knew that he had written in praise of the indulgence 
of 1672, and therefore hoped that he might be equally 
pleased with the indulgence of 1687. But fifteen years 
of thought, observation, and commerce with the world had 
made him wiser. Nor were the cases exactly parallel. 
Charles was a professed Protestant : James was a professed 
Papist. The object of Charles's indulgence was disguised : 
the object of James's indulgence was patent. Bunyan 
was not deceived. He exhorted his hearers to prepare 



JOHN BUNYAN. 35 

themselves by fasting and prayer for the danger which 
menaced their civil and religious liberties, and refused 
even to speak to the courtier who came down to remodel 
the corporation of Bedford, and who, as was supposed, had 
it in charge to offer some municipal dignity to the Bishop 
of the Baptists. 

Bunyan did not live to see the Kevolution. In the 
summer of 1688 he undertook to plead the cause of a son 
with an angry father, and at length prevailed on the old 
man not to disinherit the young one. This good work 
cost the benevolent intercessor his life. He had to ride 
through heavy rain. He came drenched to his lodgings 
on Snow Hill, was seized with a violent fever, and died in 
a few days. He was buried in Bunhill Fields ; and the 
spot where he lies is still regarded by the nonconformists 
with a feeling which seems scarcely in harmony with the 
stern spirit of their theology. Many Puritans to whom 
the respect paid by Eoman Catholics to the reliques and 
tombs of saints seemed childish or sinful, are said to have 
begged with their dying breath that their coffins might be 
placed as near as possible to the coffin of the author of the 
Pilgrim's Progress. 

The fame of Bunyan during his life, and during the 
century which followed his .death, was indeed great, but 
was almost entirely confined to religious families of the 
middle and lower classes. Yery seldom was he during 
that time mentioned with respect by any writer of great 
literary eminence. Young coupled his prose with the 
poetry of the wratched D'Urfey. In the Spiritual Quixote, 
the adventures of Christian are ranked with those of Jack 
the Giant Killer and John Hickathrift. Cowper ventured 
to praise the great allegorist, but did not venture to name 
him. It is a significant circumstance that, till a recent 
period, all the numerous editions of the Pilgrim's Progress 
were evidently meant for the cottage and the servant's 
hall. The paper, the printing, the plates, were all of the 
meanest description. In general, when the educated mi- 
nority and the common people differ about the merit of a 
book, the opinion of the educated minority finally prevails. 
The Pilgrim's Progress is perhaps the only book about 
which, after the lapse of a hundred years, the educated 



36 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

minority has come over to the opinion of the common 
people. 

The attempts which have been made to improve and to 
imitate this book, are not to be numbered. It has been 
done into verse: it has been done into modern English. 
The Pilgrimage of Tender Conscience, the Pilgrimage of 
Good Intent, the Pilgrimage of Seek Truth, the Pilgrim- 
age of Theophilus, the Infant Pilgrim, the Hindoo Pil- 
grim, are among the many feeble copies of the great origi- 
nal. But the peculiar glory of Bunyan is, that those who 
most hated his doctrines have tried to borrow the help of 
his genius. A Catholic version of his parable may be seen 
with the head of the Virgin in the title-page. On the 
other hand, those Antinomians for whom his Calvinism is 
not strong enough, may study the pilgrimage of Hephzi- 
bah, in which nothing will be found which can be con- 
strued into an admission of free agency and universal 
redemption. But the most extraordinary of all the acts 
of Vandalism by which a fine work of art v was ever de- 
faced was committed so late as the year 1853. It was 
determined to transform the Pilgrim's Progress into a 
Tractarian book. The task was not easy : for it was ne- 
cessary to make the two sacraments the most prominent 
objects in the allegory ; and of all Christian theologians, 
avowed Quakers excepted, Bunyan was the one in whose 
system the sacraments held the least prominent place. 
However, the Wicket Gate became a type of baptism, and 
the House Beautiful of the Eucharist. The effect of this 
change is such as assuredly the ingenious person who made 
it never contemplated. For, as not a single pilgrim 
passes through the Wicket Gate in infancy, and as Faith- 
ful hurries past the House Beautiful without stopping, the 
lesson which the fable in its altered shape teaches, is that 
none but adults ought to be baptized, and that the Eucha- 
*rist may safely be neglected. Noftody would have discov- 
ered from the original Pilgrim's Progress, that the author 
was not a Psedobaptist. To turn his book into a book 
against Paedobaptism, was an achievement reserved for an 
Anglo-Catholic divine. Such blunders must necessarily 
be committed by every man who mutilates parts of a great 
work, without taking a comprehensive view of the whole. 



OLIYEE GOLDSMITH. 37 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



Oliver Goldsmith was one of the most pleasing English 
writers of the eighteenth century. He was of a Protest- 
ant and Saxon family, which had been long settled in Ire- 
land, and which had, like most other Protestant and 
Saxon families, been, in troubled times, harassed and put 
in fear by the native population. His father, Charles 
Goldsmith, studied in the reign of Queen Anne at the dio- 
cesan school of Elphin, became attached to the daughter 
of the schoolmaster, married her, took orders, and settled 
at a place called Pallas in the county of Longford. There 
he with difficulty supported his wife and children on what 
he could earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer. 

At Pallas Oliver Goldsmith was born in November 
1728. That spot was then, for all practical purposes, 
almost as remote from the busy and splendid capital in 
which his later years were passed, as any clearing in Upper 
Canada or any sheep-walk in Australasia now is. Even 
at this day those enthusiasts who venture to make a pil- 
grimage to the birthplace of the poet, are forced to per- 
form the latter part of their journey on foot. The hamlet 
lies far from any high road, on a dreary plain, which, in 
wet weather, is often a lake. The lanes would break any 
jaunting car to pieces ; and there are ruts and sloughs 
through which the most' strongly built wheels cannot be 
dragged. 

While Oliver was still a child his father was presented 
to a living worth about £200 a-year, in the county of 
Westmeath. The family accordingly quitted their cottage 
in the wilderness for a spacious house on a frequented 
road, near the village of Lissoy. Here the boy was taught 
his letters by a maid-servant, and was sent in his seventh 
year to a village school kept by an old quartermaster on 
half-pay, who professed to teach nothing but reading, 
writing and arithmetic, but who had an inexhaustible fund 
of stories about ghosts, banshees and fairies, about the 
great Eapparee chiefs, Baldearg O'Donnell and galloping 
Hogan, and about the exploits of Peterborough and Stan- 



38 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WEITINGS. 

hope, the surprise of Monjuich, and the glorious disaster 
of Brihuega. This man must have been of the Protestant 
religion ; but he was of the aboriginal race, and not only 
spoke the Irish language, but could pour forth unpremedi- 
tated Irish verses. Oliver early became, and through life 
continued to be, a passionate admirer of the^ Irish music, 
and especially of the compositions of Carolan, some of the 
last notes of whose harp he heard. It ought to be added 
that Oliver, though by birth one of the Englishry, and 
though connected by numerous ties with the Established 
Church, never showed the least sign of that contemptuous 
antipathy with which, in his days, the ruling minority in 
Ireland too generally regarded the subject majority. So 
far, indeed, was he from sharing in the opinions and feel- 
ings of the caste to which he belonged, that he conceived 
an aversion to the Glorious and Immortal Memory, and, 
even when George the Third was on the throne, main- 
tained that nothing but the restoration of the banished 
dynasty could save the country. 

From the humble academy kept by the old soldier, 
Goldsmith was removed in his ninth year. He went to 
several grammar-schools, and acquired some knowledge of 
the ancient languages. His life at this time seems to have 
been far from happy. He had, as appears from the admi- 
rable portrait of him at Knowle, features harsh even to 
ugliness. The small-pox had set its mark on him with 
more than usual severity. His stature was small, and his 
limbs ill put together. Among boys, little tenderness is 
shown to personal defects ; and the ridicule excited by 
poor Oliver's appearance was heightened by a peculiar 
simplicity and a disposition to blunder which he retained 
to the last. He became the common butt of boys and 
masters, was pointed at as a fright in the play-ground, 
and flogged as a dunce in the school-room. When he had 
risen to eminence, those who had once derided him ran- 
sacked their memory for the events of his early years, 
and recited repartees and couplets which had dropped from 
him, and which, though little noticed at the time, were 
supposed, a quarter of a century later, to indicate the 
powers which produced the Vicar of Wakefield and the 
Ihserted Village. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 39 

In his seventeenth year Oliver went up to Trinity Col- 
lege, Dublin, as a sizar. The sizars paid nothing for food 
and tuition, and very little for lodging ; but they had to 
perform some menial services from which they have long 
been relieved. They swept the court ; they carried up the 
dinner to the fellows' table, and changed the plates and 
poured out the ale of the rulers of the society. Goldsmith 
was quartered, not alone, in a garret, on the window of 
which his name, scrawled by himself, is still read with 
interest. From such garrets many men of less parts than 
his have made their way to the woolsack or to the episco- 
pal bench. But Goldsmith, while he suffered all the hu- 
miliations, threw away all the advantages of his situation. 
He neglected the studies of the place, stood low at the 
examinations, was turned down to the bottom of his class 
for playing the buffoon in the lecture-room, was severely 
reprimanded for pumping on a constable, and was caned 
by a brutal tutor for giving a ball in the attic story of the 
college to some gay youths and damsels from the city. 
While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided between 
squalid distress and squalid dissipation, his father died, 
leaving a mere pittance. The youth obtained his bach- 
elor's degree and left the university. During some time 
the humble dwelling to which his widowed mother had re- 
tired was his home. He was now in his twenty-first year ; 
it was necessary that he should do something ; and his edu- 
cation seems to have fitted him to do nothing but to dress 
himself in gaudy colors, of which he was as fond as a mag- 
pie, to take a hand at cards, to sing Irish airs, to play the 
flute, to angle in summer, and to tell ghost stories by the 
fire in winter. He tried five or six professions in turn 
without success. He applied for ordination ; but, as he 
applied in scarlet clothes, he was speedily turned out of 
the episcopal palace. He then became tutor in an opulent 
family, but soon quitted his situation in consequence of a 
dispute about play. Then he determined to emigrate to 
America. His relations, with much satisfaction, saw him 
set out for Cork on a good horse, with thirty pounds in his 
pocket. But in six weeks he came back on a miserable 
hack, without a penny, and informed his mother that the 
ship in which he had taken his passage, having got a fair 



40 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

wind while lie was at a party of pleasure, had sailed with' 
out him. Then he resolved to study the law. A gene- 
rous kinsman advanced fifty pounds. With this sum Gold- 
smith went to Dublin, was enticed into a gaming house, 
and lost every shilling. He then thought of medicine. 
A small purse was made up ; and in his twenty-fourth 
year he was sent to Edinburgh. At Edinburgh he passed 
eighteen months in nominal attendance on lectures, and 
picked up some superficial information about chemistry 
and natural history. Thence he went to Leyden, still 
pretending to study physic. He left that celebrated uni- 
versity, the third university at which he had resided, in 
his twenty-seventh year, without a degree, with the merest 
smattering of medical knowledge, and with no property 
but his clothes and his flute. His flute, however, proved a 
useful friend. He rambled on foot through Flanders, 
France, and Switzerland, playing tunes which everywhere 
set the peasantry dancing, and which often procured for 
him a supper and a bed. He wandered as far as Italy. 
His musical performances, indeed, were not to the taste 
of the Italians ; but he contrived to live on the alms which 
he obtained at the gates of convents. It should, however, 
be observed, that the stories which he told about this part 
of his life ought to be received with great caution ; for 
strict veracity was never one of his virtues ; and a man 
who is ordinarily inaccurate in narration is likely to be 
more than ordinarily inaccurate when he talks about his 
own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, was so regardless of 
truth, as to assert in print that he was present at a most 
interesting conversation between Voltaire and Fontenelle, 
and that this conversation took place at Paris. Now it is 
certain that Voltaire never was within a hundred leagues 
of Paris during the whole time which Goldsmith passed 
on the continent. 

In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a 
shilling, without a friend, and without a calling. He had, 
indeed, if his own unsupported evidence may be trusted, 
obtained from the University of Padua a doctor's degree ; 
but this dignity proved utterly useless to him. In Eng- 
land his flute was not in request ; there were no convents ; 
and he was forced to have recourse to a series of desper- 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 41 

ate expedients. He turned strolling player ; but his face 
and figure were ill suited to the boards even of the hum- 
blest theatre. He pounded drugs and ran about London 
with phials for charitable chemists. He joined a swarm 
of beggars, which made its nest in Axe Yard. He was 
for a time usher of a school, and felt the miseries and 
humiliations of this situation so keenly, that he thought it 
a promotion to be permitted to earn his bread as a book- 
seller's hack ; but he soon found the new yoke more gall- 
ing than the old one, and was glad to become an usher 
again. He obtained a medical appointment in the service 
of the East India Company ; but the appointment was 
speedily revoked. Why it was revoked we are not told. 
The subject was one on which he never liked to talk. It 
is probable that he was incompetent to perform the duties 
of the place. Then he presented himself at Surgeons' 
Hall for examination, as mate to a naval hospital. Even 
to so humble a post he was found unequal. By this time 
the schoolmaster whom he had served for a morsel of food 
and the third part of a bed, was no more. Nothing re- 
mained but to return to the lowest drudgery of literature. 
Goldsmith took a garret in a miserable court, to which he 
had to climb from the brink of Fleet Ditch by a dizzy lad- 
der of flagstones called Breakneck Steps. The court and 
the ascent have long disappeared, but old Londoners well 
remember both. Here, at thirty, the unlucky adventurer 
sat down to toil like a galley slave. 

In the succeeding six years he sent to the press some 
things which have survived, and many which have per- 
ished. He produced articles for reviews, magazines, and 
newspapers ; children's books, which, bound in gilt paper 
and adorned with hideous woodcuts, appeared in the win- 
dow of the once far-famed shop at the corner of St. Paul's 
Churchyard ; An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in 
Europe, which, though of little or no value, is still re- 
printed among his works ; a Life of Beau Nash, which is 
not reprinted, though it well deserves to be so ; a super- 
ficial and incorrect, but very readable, History of England, 
in a series of letters purporting to be addressed by a no- 
bleman to his son ; and some very lively and amusing 
Sketches of London Society, in a series of letters purporting 



42 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 

to be addressed by a Chinese traveller to his friends. All 
these works were anonymous ; but some of them were well 
known to be Goldsmith's ; and he gradually rose in the 
estimation of the booksellers for whom he drudged. He 
was, indeed, emphatically a popular writer. For accurate 
research or grave disquisition, he was not well qualified by 
nature or by education. He knew nothing accurately : his 
reading had been desultory ; nor had he meditated deeply 
on what he had read. He had seen much of the world ; 
but he had noticed and retained little more of what he 
had seen than some grotesque incidents and characters 
which happened to strike his fancy. But, though his mind 
was very scantily stored with materials, he used what ma- 
terials he had in such a way as to produce a wonderful 
effect. There have been many greater writers ; but per- 
haps no writer was ever more uniformly agreeable. His 
style was always puie and easy, and, on proper occasions, 
pointed and energetic. His narratives were always amusing, 
his descriptions always picturesque, his humour rich and 
joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge of amiable sad- 
ness. About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive, 
there was a certain natural grace and decorum, hardly to 
be expected from a man a great part of whose life had 
been passed among thieves and beggars, streetwalkers and 
merryandrews, in those squalid dens which are the re- 
proach of great capitals. 

As his name gradually became known, the circle of his 
acquaintance widened. He was introduced to Johnson, 
who was then considered as the first of living English 
writers ; to Eeynolds, the first of English painters ; and 
to Burke, who had not yet entered parliament, but had 
distinguished himself greatly by his writings and by the 
eloquence of his conversation. With these eminent men 
Goldsmith became intimate. In 1763 he was one of the 
nine original members of that celebrated fraternity which 
has sometimes been called the Literary Club, but which 
has always disclaimed that epithet, and still glories in the 
simple name of The Club. 

By this time Goldsmith had quitted his miserable 
dwelling at the top of Breakneck Steps, and had taken 
chambers in the more civilized region of the Inns of Court. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 43 

But he was still often reduced to pitiable shifts. Towards 
the close of 1764, his rent was so long in arrear that his 
landlady one morning called in the help of a sheriff's offi- 
cer. The debtor, in great perplexity, despatched a mes- 
senger to Johnson ; and Johnson, always friendly though 
often surly, sent back the messenger with a guinea, and 
promised to follow speedily. He came, and found that 
Goldsmith had changed the guinea, and was railing at the 
landlady over a bottle of Madeira. Johnson put the cork 
into the bottle, and entreated his friend to consider calmly 
how money was to be procured. Goldsmith said that he 
had a novel ready for the press. Johnson glanced at the 
manuscript, saw that there were good things in it, took it 
to a bookseller, sold it for £60, and soon returned with 
the money. The rent was paid, and the sheriff's officer 
withdrew. According to one story, Goldsmith gave his 
landlady a sharp reprimand for her treatment of him ; 
according to another, he insisted on her joining him in a 
bowl of punch. Both stories are probably true. The 
novel which was thus ushered into the world was the Vicar 
of Wakefield. 

But before the Vicar of Wakefield appeared in print, 
came the great crisis of Goldsmith's literary life. In 
Christmas week, 1764, he published a poem, entitled the 
Traveller. It was the first work to which he had put his 
name ; and it at once raised him to the rank of a legiti- 
mate English classic. The opinion of the most skilful 
critics was, that nothing finer had appeared in verse since 
the fourth book of the Dunciad. In one respect the Trav- 
eller differs from all Goldsmith's other writings. In gen- 
eral his designs were bad, and his execution good. In 
the Traveller, the execution, though deserving of much 
praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical 
poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the 
same time so simple. An English wanderer, seated on a 
crag among the Alps, near the point where three great 
countries meet, looks down on the boundless prospect, re- 
views his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery, 
of climate, of government, of religion, of national charac 
ter, which he has observed, and comes to the conclusion, 
just or unjust, that our happiness depends little on politi- 



44 macaulay's miscellaneous whitings. 

cal institutions, and much on the temper and regulation 
of our own minds. 

While the fourth edition of the Traveller was on the 
counters of the booksellers, the Vicar of Wakefield ap- 
peared, and rapidly obtained a popularity which has lasted 
down to our own time, and which is likely to last as long 
as our language. The fable is indeed one of the worst 
that ever was constructed. It wants, not merely that prob- 
ability which ought to be found in a tale of common 
English life, but that consistency which ought to be found 
even in the wildest fiction about witches, giants, and 
fairies. But the earlier chapters have all the sweetness of 
pastoral poetry, together with all the vivacity of comedy. 
Moses and his spectacles, the vicar and his monogamy, the 
sharper and his cosmogony, the squire proving from Aris- 
totle that relatives are related, Olivia preparing herself for 
the arduous task of converting a rakish lover by studying 
the controversy between Eobinson Crusoe and Friday, the 
great ladies with their scandal about Sir Tomkyn's amours 
and Dr. Burdock's verses, and Mr. Burchell with his 
" Fudge," have caused as much harmless mirth as has ever 
been caused by matter packed into so small a number of 
pages. The latter part of the tale is unworthy of the be- 
ginning. As we approach the catastrophe, the absurdities 
lie thicker and thicker ; and the gleams of pleasantry be- 
come rarer and rarer. 

The success which had attended Goldsmith as a novel- 
ist emboldened him to try his fortune as a dramatist. 
He wrote the Goodnatured Man, a piece which had a worse 
fate than it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it at 
Drury Lane. It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, 
but was coldly received. The author, however, cleared by 
his benefit nights and by the sale of the copyright, no less 
than £500, five times as much as he had made by the 
Traveller and the Vicar of Wakefield together. The plot 
of the Goodnatured Man is, like almost all Goldsmith's 
plots, very ill-constructed. But some passages are ex- 
quisitely ludicrous ; much more ludicrous, indeed, than 
suited the taste of the town at that time. A canting, 
mawkish play, entitled False Delicacy, had just had an 
immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 45 

some years, more tears were shed at comedies than at 
tragedies ; and a pleasantry which moved the audience to 
anything more than a grave smile, was reprobated as low. 
It is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the 
Goodnatured Man, that in which Miss Eichland finds her 
lover attended by the bailiff and the bailiff's follower in 
full court dresses, should have been mercilessly hissed, and 
should have been omitted after the first night. 

In 1770 appeared the Deserted Village. In mere dic- 
tion and versification this celebrated poem is fully equal, 
and perhaps superior to the Traveller, and it is generally 
preferred to the Traveller by that large class of readers 
who think, with Bayes in the Rehearsal, that the only use 
of a plan is to bring in fine things. More discerning 
judges, however, while they admire the beauty of the de- 
tails, are shocked by one unpardonable fault which per- 
vades the whole. The fault which we mean is not that theory 
about wealth and luxury which has so often been censured 
by political economists. The theory is indeed false : but 
the poem, considered merely as a poem, is not necessarily 
the worse on that account. The finest poem in the Latin 
language, indeed, the finest didactic poem in any lan- 
guage, was written in defence of the silliest and meanest 
of all systems of natural and moral philosophy. A poet 
may easily be pardoned for reasoning ill ; but he cannot 
be pardoned for describing ill, for observing the world in 
which he lives so carelessly that his portraits bear no re- 
semblance to the originals, for exhibiting as copies from 
real life monstrous combinations of things which never 
were and never could be found together. What would be 
thought of a painter who should mix August and January 
in one landscape, who should introduce a frozen river into 
a harvest scene ? Would it be a sufficient defence of such 
a picture to say, that every part was exquisitely colored, 
that the green hedges, the apple-trees loaded with fruit, 
the waggons reeling under the yellow sheaves, and the sun- 
burned reapers wiping their foreheads, were very fine, and 
that the ice and the boys sliding were also very fine % To 
such a picture the Deserted Village bears a great resem- 
blance. It is made up of incongruous parts. The village 
in its happy days is a true English village. The village 



46 MACAULAY'S miscellaneous whitings. 

in its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the mis- 
ery which Goldsmith has brought close together belong to 
two different countries and to two different stages in the 
progress of society. He had assuredly never seen in his 
native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, 
content, and tranquillity, as his Auburn. He had assur- 
edly never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a 
paradise turned out of their homes in one day, and forced 
to emigrate in a body to America. Tbe hamlet he had 
probably seen in Kent : the ejectment he had probably 
seen in Munster ; but by joining the two, he has produced 
something which never was and never will be seen in any 
part of the world. 

In 1773, Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden 
with a second play, She Stoops to Conquer. The manager 
was not without great difficulty induced to bring this piece 
out. The sentimental comedy still reigned, and Gold- 
smith's comedies were not sentimental. The Goodnatured 
Man had been too funny to succeed ; yet the mirth of the 
Goodnatured Man was sober when compared with the rich 
drollery of She Stoops to Conquer, which is, in truth, an in- 
comparable farce in five acts. On this occasion, however, 
genius triumphed. Pit, boxes, and galleries were in a 
constant roar of laughter. If any bigoted admirer of 
Kelly and Cumberland ventured to hiss or groan, he was 
speedily silenced by a general cry of " Turn him out," or 
" Throw him over." Two generations have since con- 
firmed the verdict which was pronounced on that night. 

While Goldsmith was writing the Deserted Village and 
She Stoops to Conquer, he was employed on works of a very 
different kind, works from which he derived little reputa- 
tion but much profit. He compiled for the use of schools 
a History of Rome, by which he made £300, a History of 
England, by which he made £600, a Histoiy of Greece, for 
which he received £250, a Natural History, for which the 
booksellers covenanted to pay him 800 guineas. These 
works he produced without any elaborate research, by 
merely selecting, abridging, and translating into his own 
clear, pure, and flowing language, what he found in books 
well known to the world, but too bulky or too dry for boys 
and girls. He committed some strange blunders : for he 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 47 

knew nothing with accuracy. Thus in his History of Eng- 
land, he tells us that Naseby is in Yorkshire ; nor did he 
correct this mistake when the book was reprinted. He 
was very nearly hoaxed into putting into the History of 
Greece an account of a battle between Alexander the 
Great and Montezuma. In his Animated Nature, he re- 
lates, with faith and with perfect gravity, all the most 
, absurd lies which he could find in books of travels about 
gigantic Patagonians, monkeys that preach sermons, night- 
ingales that repeat long conversations. " If he can tell a 
horse from a cow," said Johnson, " that is the extent 01 
his knowledge of zoology." How little Goldsmith was 
qualified to write about the physical sciences, is sufficiently 
proved by two anecdotes. He on one occasion denied that 
the sun is longer in the northern than in the southern 
signs. It was vain to cite the authority of Maupertuis. 
" Maupertuis ! " he cried, " I understand those matters 
better than Maupertuis." On another occasion he, in defi- 
ance of the evidence of his own senses, maintained obsti- 
nately, and even angrily, that he chewed his dinner by 
moving his upper jaw. 

Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few writers have done 
more to make the first steps in the laborious road to know- 
ledge easy and pleasant. His compilations are widely 
distinguished from the compilations of ordinary book- 
makers. He was a great, perhaps an unequalled, master 
of the arts of selection and condensation. In these re- 
spects his histories of Kome and of England, and still 
more his own abridgments of these histories, well de- 
served to be studied. In general, nothing is less attrac- 
tive than an epitome: but the epitomes of Goldsmith, 
even when most concise, are always amusing ; and to read 
them is considered by intelligent children, not as a task, 
but as a pleasure. 

Goldsmith might now be considered as a prosperous 
man. He had the means of living in comfort, and even 
in what to one who had so often slept in barns and on 
bulks must have been luxury. His fame was great, and 
was constantly rising. He lived in what was intellectu- 
ally far the best society of the kingdom, in a society in 
which no talent or accomplishment was wanting, and in 



48 macatjlay's miscellaneous writings. 

which the art of conversation was cultivated with splen- 
did success. There probably were never four talkers more 
admirable in four different ways, than Johnson, Burke, 
Beauclerk, and Garrick ; and Goldsmith was on terms of 
intimacy with all the four. He aspired to share in their 
colloquial renown ; but never was ambition more unfortu- 
nate. It may seem strange that a man who wrote with so 
much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have been, 
whenever he took a part in conversation, an empty, noisy, 
blundering, rattle. But on this point the evidence is over- 
whelming. So extraordinary was the contrast between 
Goldsmith's published works and the silly things which he 
said, that Horace Walpole described him as an inspired 
idiot. "Noll," said Garrick, "wrote like an angel, and 
talked like poor Pol." Chamier declared that it was a 
hard exercise of faith to believe that so foolish a chatterer 
could have really written the Traveller. Even Boswell 
could say, with contemptuous compassion, that he liked 
very well to hear honest Goldsmith run on. " Yes, sir," 
said Johnson, " but he should not like to hear himself." 
Minds differ as rivers differ. There are transparent and 
sparkling rivers, from which it is delightful to drink as 
they flow ; to such rivers the minds of such men as Burke 
and Johnson may be compared. But there are rivers from 
which the water when first drawn is turbid and noisome, 
but becomes pellucid as crystal and delicious to the taste, 
if it be suffered to stand till it has deposited a sediment ; 
and such a river is a type of the mind of Goldsmith. His 
first thoughts on every subject were confused even to ab- 
surdity, but they required only a little time to work them- 
selves clear. When he wrote they had that time : and 
therefore his readers pronouncd him a man of genius : but 
when he talked, he talked nonsense, and made himself 
the laughing-stock of his hearers. He was painfully sen- 
sible of his inferiority in conversation ; he felt every fail- 
ure keenly ; yet he had not sufficient judgment and self- 
command to hold his tongue. His animal spirits and van- 
ity were always impelling him to try to do the one thing 
which he could not do. After every attempt, he felt that 
he had exposed himself, and writhed with shame and vex- 
ation ; yet the next moment he began again. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 49 

His associates seem to have regarded him with kind- 
ness, which, in spite of their admiration of his writings, 
was not unmixed with contempt. In truth, there was in 
his character much to love, but very little to respect. His 
heart was soft, even to weakness : he was so generous, 
that he quite forgot to be just ; he forgave injuries so 
readily, that he might be said to invite them, and was so 
liberal to beggars, that he had nothing left for his tailor 
and his butcher. He was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, 
improvident. One vice of a darker shade was imputed to 
him, envy. But there is not the least reason to believe 
that this bad passion, though it sometimes made him 
wince and utter fretful exclamations, ever impelled him to 
injure by wicked arts the reputation of any of his rivals. 
The truth probably is, that he was not more envious, but 
merely less prudent than his neighbours. His heart was 
on his lips. All those small jealousies, which are but too 
common among men of letters, but which a man of let- 
ters, who is also a man of the world, does his best to con- 
ceal, Goldsmith avowed with the simplicity of a child. 
When he was envious, instead of affecting indifference, 
instead of damning with faint praise, instead of doing 
injuries slyly and in the dark, he told everybody that he 
was envious. " Do not, pray, do not, talk of Johnson in 
such terms," he said to Boswell ; " you harrow up my very 
soul." George Steevens and Cumberland, were men far 
too cunning to say such a thing. They would have echoed 
the praises of the man whom they envied, and then have 
sent to the newspapers anonymous libels upon him. Both 
what was good and what was bad in Goldsmith's charac- 
ter was to his associates a perfect security that he would 
never commit such villany. He was neither ill-natured 
enough, nor long-headed enough, to be guilty of any ma- 
licious act which required contrivance and disguise. 

Goldsmith has sometimes been represented as a man 
of genius, cruelly treated by the world, and doomed to 
struggle with difficulties, which at last broke his heart. 
But no representation can be more remote from the truth. 
He did, indeed, go through much sharp misery before he 
had clone anything considerable in literature. But after 
his name had appeared on the title-page of the Traveller, 
3 



50 MACAULAT's MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 

lie had none but himself to blame for his distresses. His 
average income, during the last seven years of his life, 
certainly exceeded £400 a-year ; and £400 a-year ranked, 
among the incomes of that day, at least as high as £800 
a-year would rank at present. A single man living in 
the Temple, with £400 a-year, might then be called opu- 
lent. Not one in ten of the young gentlemen of good 
families who were studying the law there had so much. 
But all the wealth which Lord Clive had brought from 
Bengal, and Sir Lawrence Dundas from Germany, joined 
together, would not have sufficed for Goldsmith. He 
spent twice as much as he had. He wore fine clothes, 
gave dinners of several courses, paid court to venal beau- 
ties. He had also, it should be remembered, to the hon- 
our of his heart, though not of his head, a guinea, or five, 
or ten, according to the state of his purse, ready for any 
tale of distress, true or false. But it was not in dress or 
feasting, in promiscuous amours or promiscuous charities, 
that his chief expense lay. He had been from boyhood a 
gambler, and at once the most sanguine and the most un- 
skilful of gamblers. For a time he put off the day of 
inevitable ruin by temporary expedients. He obtained 
advances from booksellers, by promising to execute works 
which he never began. But at length ths source of sup- 
ply failed. He owed more than £2000 ; and he saw no 
hope of extrication from his embarrassments. His spirits 
and health gave way. He was attacked by a nervous 
fever which he thought himself competent to treat. It 
would have been happy for him if his medical skill had 
been appreciated as justly by himself as by others. Not- 
withstanding the degree which he pretended to have re- 
ceived at Padua, he could procure no patients. " I do not 
practise," he once said ; " I make it a rule to prescribe 
only for my friends." " Pray, clear Doctor," said Beau- 
clerk, " alter your rule ; and prescribe only for your ene- 
mies." Goldsmith now, in spite of this excellent advice, 
prescribed for himself. The remedy aggravated the mal- 
ady. The sick man was induced to call in real physi- 
cians ; and they at one time imagined that they had cured 
the disease. Still his weakness and restlessness contin- 
ued. He could get no sleep. He could take no food. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 51 

"You are worse," said one of his medical attendants, 
"than you should be from the degree of fever which you 
have. Is your mind at ease ? " " No ; it is not," were 
the last recorded words of Oliver Goldsmith. He died on 
the 3d of April, 1774, in his forty-sixth year. He was 
laid in the churchyard of the Temple ; but the spot was 
not marked by any inscription, and is now forgotten. 
The coffin was followed by Burke and Eeynolds. Both 
these great men were sincere mourners. Burke, when he 
heard of Goldsmith's death, had burst into a flood of tears. 
Eeynolds had been so much moved by the news, that he 
had flung aside his brush and palette for the day. 

A short time after Goldsmith's death, a little poem 
appeared, which will, as long as our language lasts, asso- 
ciate the names of his two illustrious friends with his own. 
It has already been mentioned, that he sometimes felt 
keenly the sarcasm which his wild blundering talk brought 
upon him. He was, not long before his last illness, pro- 
voked into retaliating. He wisely betook himself to his 
pen ; and at that weapon he proved himself a match for 
all his assailants together. Within a small compass he 
drew with a singularly easy and vigorous pencil the char- 
acters of nine or ten of his intimate associates. Though 
this little work did not receive his last touches, it must 
always be regarded as a masterpiece. It is impossible, 
however, not to wish that four or five likenesses which 
have no interest for posterity, were wanting to that noble 
gallery, and that their places were supplied by sketches 
of Johnson and Gibbon, as happy and vivid as the 
sketches of Burke and Garrick. 

Some of Goldsmith's friends and admirers honoured 
him with a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. Nollekens 
was the sculptor ; and Johnson wrote the inscription. It 
is much to be lamented that Johnson did not leave to 
posterity a more durable and a more valuable memorial of 
his friend. A life of Goldsmith would have been an ines- 
timable addition to the Lives of the Poets. No man ap- 
preciated Goldsmith's writings more justly than Johnson : 
no man was better acquainted with Goldsmith's character 
and habits ; and no man was more competent to delineate 
with truth and spirit the peculiarities of a mind in which 



52 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

great powers were found in company with great weak- 
nesses. Bat the list of poets to whose works Johnson was 
requested by the booksellers to furnish prefaces, ended 
with Lyttleton, who died in 1773. The line seems to have 
been drawn expressly for the purpose of excluding the 
person whose portrait would have most fitly closed the 
series. Goldsmith, however, has been fortunate in his 
biograj)hers. Within a few years his life has been written 
by Mr. Prior, by Mr. Washington Irving, and by Mr. For- 
ster. The diligence of Mr. Prior deserves great praise ; 
the style of Mr. Washington Irving is always pleasing ; 
but the highest place must, in justice, be assigned to the 
eminently interesting work of Mr. Forster. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

Samuel Johnson, one of the most eminent English writers 
of the eighteenth century, was the son of Michael John- 
son, who was, at the beginning of that century, a magis- 
trate of Lichfield, and a bookseller of great note in the 
midland counties. Michael's abilities and attainments 
seem to have been considerable. He was so well acquaint- 
ed with the contents of the volumes wdiich he exposed to 
sale, that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worces- 
tershire thought him an oracle on points of learning. Be- 
tween him and the clergy, indeed, there was a strong reli- 
gious and political sympathy. He was a zealous church- 
man, and, though he had qualified himself for municipal 
office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, 
was to the last a Jacobite in heart. At his house, a house 
which is still pointed out to every traveller who visits 
Lichfield, Samuel was born on the 18th of September 1709. 
In the child the physical, intellectual, and moral peculiar- 
ities which afterwards distinguished the man were plainly 
discernible ; great muscular strength accompanied by much 
awkwardness and many infirmities ; great quickness of 
parts, with a morbid propensity to sloth and procrastina- 



SAMUEL JOHiS T SO^ 53 

tion ; a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irri- 
table temper. He had inherited from his ancestors a 
scrofulous taint, which it was beyond the power of medi- 
cine to remove. His parents were weak enough to believe 
that the royal touch was a specific for this malady. In 
his third year he was taken up to London, inspected by 
the court surgeon, prayed over by the court chaplains, and 
stroked and presented with a piece of gold by Queen 
Anne. One of his earliest recollections was that of a 
stately lady in a diamond stomacher and a long black hood. 
Her hand was applied in vain. The boy's features, which 
were originally noble and not irregular, were distorted by 
his malady. His cheeks were deeply scarred. He lost 
for a time the sight of one eye ; and he saw but very im- 
perfectly with the other. But the force of his mind over- 
came every impediment. Indolent as he was, he acquired 
knowledge with such ease and rapidity, that at every school 
to which he was sent he was soon the best scholar. FronT^ 
sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and was left to his 
own devices. He learned much at this time, though his 
studies were without guidance and without plan. He ran- 
sacked his father's shelves, dipped into a multitude of 
books, read what was interesting, and passed over what^* 
was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or 
no useful knowledge in such a way : but much that was 
dull to ordinary lads was interesting to Samuel. He read 
little Greek ; for his proficiency in that language was not 
such that he could take much pleasure in the masters of 
Attic poetry and eloquence. But he had left school a 
good latinist, and he soon acquired, in the large and mis- 
cellaneous library of which he now had the command, an 
extensive knowledge of Latin literature. That Augustan 
delicacy of taste, which is the boast of the great public 
sohools of England he never possessed. But he was early 
f familiar with some classical writers, who were quite 
unknown to the best scholars in the sixth form at 
Eton. He was peculiarly attracted by the works of the 
great restorers of learning. Once, while searching for 
some apples, he found a huge folio volume of Petrarch's 
works. The name excited his curiosity, and he eagerly 
devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed the diction and ver- 



54 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

sification of his own Latin compositions show that he had 
paid at least as much attention to modern copies from the 
antique as to the original models. 

While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his 
family was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old Michael 
Johnson was much better qualified to pore upon books, and 
to talk about them, than to trade in them. iHis business 
declined : his debts increased : it was with difficulty that 
the daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was 
out of his power to support his son at either university ; 
but a wealthy neighbor offered assistance ; and, in reliance 
on promises which proved to be of very little value, Sam- 
uel was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the 
young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that so- 
ciety, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure 
and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive 
and curious information which he had picked up during 
many months of desultory, but not unprofitable study. 
On the first day of his residence he surprised his teachers 
by quoting Macrobius ; and one of the most learned among 
them declared, that he had never known a freshman of 
equal attainments. 
*^ At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three years. 
He was poor even to raggedness ; and his appearance ex- 
cited a mirth and a pity, which were equally intolerable 
to his haughty spirit. He was driven from the quadrangle 
of Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members 
of that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. 
Some charitable person placed a new pair at his door ; but 
he spurned them away in a fury. Distress made him, not 
servile, but reckless and ungovernable. No opulent gen- 
tleman commoner, panting for one-and-twenty, could have 
treated the academical authorities with more gross disre- 
spect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under 
the gate of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, 
haranguing a circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his 
tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave 
him an undisputed ascendancy. In every mutiny against 
the discipline of the college, he was the ringleader. Much 
was pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished 
by abilities and acquirements. He had early made him- 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 55 

self known by turning Pope's Messiah into Latin verse. 
The style and rhythm, indeed, were not exactly Virgilian ; 
but the translation found many admirers, and was read 
with pleasure by Pope himself. 

^ The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the 
ordinary course of things, have become a Bachelor of Arts : 
but he was at the end of his resources. Those promises 
of support on which he had relied had not been kept. 
His family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford 
tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than he could 
pay. In the autumn of 1731, he was under the necessity 
of quitting the university without a degree. In the fol- 
lowing winter his father died. The old man left but a 
pittance ; and of that pittance almost the whole was ap- 
propriated to the support of his widow. The property to 
which Samuel succeeded amounted to no more than twenty 
pounds. 

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was* 
one hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that 
struggle needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by 
the sufferings of an unsound body and an unsound mind. 
Before the young man left the university, his hereditary 
malady had broken forth in a singularly cruel form. ? He 
had become an incurable hypochondriac. ; He said long 
after that he had been mad all his life, or at least not per- 
fectly sane ; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than 
his have often been thought grounds sufficient for absolv- 
ing felons, and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his 
gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and some- 
times terrified people who did not know him. At a din- 
ner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and 
twitch off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room 
by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord's Prayer. 
He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particu- 
lar alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see the 
hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every 
post in the streets through which he walked. If by any 
chance he missed a post, he would go back a hundred 
yards and repair the omission. Under the influence of 
his disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his 
imagination morbidly active. At one time he would stand 



5Q MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

poring on the town clock without being able to tell the hour. 
At another, he w T ould distinctly hear his mother, who w^as 
many miles off, calling him by his name. But this was not 
the worst. A deep melancholy took possession of him, 
and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature 
and of human destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured 
has driven many men to shoot themselves or drown them- 
selves. But he was under no temptation to commit sui- 
cide. He was sick of life ; but he was afraid of death ; 
and he shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded 
him of the inevitable hour. In religion he found but little 
comfort during his long and frequent fits of dejection ; or 
his religion partook of his own character. The light from 
heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a direct line, or 
with its ow r n pure splendour. The rays had to struggle 
through a disturbing medium : they reached him refracted, 
dulled and discoloured by the thick gloom which had set- 
* tied on his soul ; and, though they might be sufficiently 
jdear to guide him, were too dim to cheer him. 

With such infirmities of body and of mind, this cele- 
brated man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way 
through the world. He remained during about five years 
in the midland counties. At Lichfield, his birth-place and 
his early home, he had inherited some friends and ac- 
quired others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, 
a gay officer of noble family, who happened to be quar- 
tered there. Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the ecclesi- 
astical court of the diocese, a man of distinguished parts, 
learning, and knowledge of the world, did himself honour 
by patronising the young adventurer, whose repulsive per- 
son, unpolished manners, and squalid garb, moved many 
of the petty aristocracy of the neighbourhood to laughter 
or to disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find 
no way of earning a livelihood. He became usher of a 
grammar school in Leicestershire ; he resided as a hum- 
ble companion in the house of a country gentleman ; but 
a life of dependence was insupportable to his haughty 
spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a 
few guineas by literary drudgery. In that town he print- 
ed a translation, little noticed at the time, and long for- 
gotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 51 

forth proposals for publishing by subscription the poems of 
Politian, with notes containing a history of modern Latin 
verse ; but subscriptions did not come in ; and the volume 
never appeared. 

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, John- 
son fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs. Eliz- 
abeth Porter, a widow who had children as old as himself. 
To ordinary spectators, the lady appeared to be a short, 
fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in 
gaudy colours, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and 
graces which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys 
and Lepals. To Johnson, however, whose passions were 
strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse 
from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been in 
the same room with a woman of real fashicn, his Titty, as 
he called her, was the most beautiful, graceful, and accom- 
plished of her sex. That his admiration was unfeigned, 
cannot be doubted ; for she* was as poor as himself. She 
accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour, the 
addresses of a suitor who might have been her son. The 
marriage, however, in spite of occasional wranglings, 
proved happier than might have been- expected. The 
lover continued to be under the illusions of the wedding- 
day till the lady died, in her sixty-fourth year. On her 
monument he placed an inscription extolling the charms 
of her person and of her manners ; and when, long after 
her decease, he had occasion to mention her, he exclaimed, 
with a tenderness half ludicrous, half pathetic, "Pretty 
creature ! " 

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert him- 
self more strenuously than he had hitherto done. He 
took a house in the neighbourhood of his native town, and 
advertised for pupils. But eighteen months passed away, 
and only three pupils came to his academy. Indeed, his 
appearance was so strange, and his temper so violent, that 
his schoolroom must have resembled an ogre's den. Nor 
was the tawdry painted grandmother whom he called his 
Titty well qualified to make provision for the comfort of 
young gentlemen. David Garrick. who was one of the 
pupils, used, many years later, to throw the best company 
3* 



58 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

of London into convulsions of laughter, by mimicking the 
endearments of this extraordinary pair. 

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his 
age, determined to seek his fortune in the capital as a lit- 
erary adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three 
acts of the tragedy of Irene in manuscript, and two or 
three letters of introduction from his friend Walmesley. 

Never since literature became a calling in England 
had it been a less gainful calling than at the time when 
Johnson took up his residence in London. In the preced- 
ing generation, a writer of eminent merit was sure to be 
munificently rewarded by the government. The least that 
he could expect was a pension or a sinecure place ; and, if 
he showed any aptitude for politics, he might hope to be a 
member of parliament, a lord of the treasury, an ambas- 
sador, a secretary of state. It would be easy, on the other 
hand, to name several writers of the nineteenth century, 
of whom the least successful has received forty thousand 
pounds from the booksellers. But Johnson entered on his 
vocation in the most dreary part of the dreary interval 
wdiich separated two ages of prosperity. Literature had 
ceased to flourish under the patronage of the great, and 
had not begun to flourish under the patronage of the pub- 
lic. One man of letters, indeed, Pope, had acquired by 
his pen what was then considered as a handsome fortune, 
and lived on a footing of equality with nobles and minis- 
ters of state. But this was a solitary exception. Even 
an author whose reputation was established, and whose 
works were popular, such an author as Thomson, whose 
Seasons were in every library, such an author as Fielding, 
whose Pasquin had had a greater run than any drama 
since The Beggar's Opera, was sometimes glad to obtain, 
by pawning his best coat, the means of dining on tripe at 
a cookshop underground, where he could wipe his hands, 
after his greasy meal, on the back of a Newfoundland dog. 
It is easy, therefore, to imagine what humiliations and 
privations must have awaited the novice who had still to 
earn a name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson 
applied for employment, measured with a scornful eye that 
athletic though uncouth frame, and exclaimed, " You had 
better get a porter's knot, and carry trunks." Nor was 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 59 

the advice bad, for a porter was likely to be as plentifully 
fed, and as comfortably lodged, as a poet. 

Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was 
able to form any literary connection from which he could 
expect more than bread for the day which was passing 
over him. He never forgot the generosity with which 
Hervey, who was now residing in London, relieved his 
wants during this time of trial. " Harry Hervey," said 
the old philosopher many years later, " was a vicious man ; 
but he was very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I 
shall love him." At Hervey' s table Johnson sometimes 
enjoyed feasts which were made more agreeable by con- 
trast. But in general he dined, and thought that he dined 
well, on sixpenny worth of meat and a pennyworth of 
bread at an alehouse near Drury Lane. 

The effect of the privations and sufferings which he 
endured at this time, was discernible to the last in his 
temper and his deportment. His manners had never been 
courtly. They now became almost savage. , Being fre- 
quently under the necessity of wearing shabby coats and 
dirty shirts, he became a confirmed sloven. Being often 
very hungry when he sate down to his meals, he contract- 
ed a habit of eating with ravenous greediness. Even to 
the end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, the 
sight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and 
birds of prey. His taste in cookery, formed in subterra- 
nean ordinaries and alamode beefshops, was far from deli- 
cate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to have near him 
a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie made 
with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence 
that his veins swelled, and the moisture broke out on his 
forehead. The affronts which his poverty emboldened stu- 
pid and low-minded men to offer to him, would have bro- 
ken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him rude 
even to ferocity. Unhappily, the insolence which, while 
it was defensive, was pardonable, and in some sense re- 
spectable, accompanied him into societies where he was 
treated with courtesy and kindness. He was repeatedly 
provoked into striking those who had taken liberties with 
him. All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to ab- 
stain from talking about their beatings, except Osborne, 



60 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

the most rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who pro- 
claimed every where that he had been knocked down by 
the huge fellow whom he had hired to puff the Harleian 
Library. 

About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in 
London, he was fortunate enough to obtain regular em- 
ployment from Cave, an enterprising and intelligent book- 
seller, who w^as proprietor and editor of the Gentlemen's 
Magazine. That journal, just entering on the ninth year 
of its long existence, was the only periodical work in the 
kingdom which then had what would now be called a 
large circulation. It was, indeed, the chief source of par- 
liamentary intelligence. It was not then safe, even dur- 
ing a recess, to publish an account of the proceedings of 
either House without some disguise. Cave, however, ven- 
tured to entertain his readers with what he called Eeports 
of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput. France was 
Blefusco : London was Mildendo : pounds were sprugs : 
the Duke of Newcastle was the Nardac secretary of state : 
Lord Hardwicke was the Hurgo Hickrad : and William 
Pulteney was Wingul Pulnub. To write the speeches 
was, during several years, the business of Johnson. He 
was generally furnished with notes, meagre indeed, and 
inaccurate, of what had been said ; but sometimes he had 
to find arguments and eloquence both for the ministry and 
for the opposition. He was himself a Tory, not from ra- 
tional conviction — for his serious opinion was that one 
form of government was just as good or as bad as another 
— but from mere passion, such as inflamed the Capulets 
against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Eoman circus 
against the Greens. In his infancy he had heard so much 
talk about the villanies of the Whigs, and the dangers of 
the Church, that he had become a furious partisan when he 
could scarcely speak. Before he was three, he had insisted 
on being taken to hear Sacheverell preach at Lichfield 
Cathedral, and had listened to the sermon with as much 
respect, and probably with as much intelligence, as any 
Staffordshire squire in the congregation. The work which 
had been begun in the nursery had been completed by the 
university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was the 
most Jacobitical place in England ; and Pembroke was 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 61 

one of the most Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The pre- 
judices which he brought up to London, were scarcely less 
absurd than those of his own Tom Tempest. Charles II. 
and James II. were two of the best kings that ever 
reigned. Laud, a poor creature who never did, said, or 
wrote any thing indicating more than the ordinary capa- 
city of an old woman, was a prodigy of parts and learn- 
ing over whose tomb Art and Genius still continued to 
weep. Hampden deserved no more honourable name than 
that of " the zealot of rebellion." Even the ship money, 
condemned not less decidedly by Falkland and Clarendon 
than by the bitterest Soundheads, Johnson would not pro- 
nounce to have been an unconstitutional impost. Under 
a government the mildest that had ever been known in 
the world, under a government which allowed to the peo- 
ple an unprecedented liberty of speech and action, he fan- 
cied that he was a slave ; he assailed the ministry with 
obloquy which refuted itself, and regretted the lost free- 
dom and happiness of those golden days in which a writer 
who had taken but one-tenth part of the license allowed 
to him would have been pilloried, mangled with the shears, 
whipped at the cart's tail, and flung into a noisome dun- 
geon to die. He hated dissenters and stock-jobbers, the 
excise and the army, septennial parliaments, and conti- 
nental connections. He long had an aversion to the 
Scotch, an aversion of which he could not remember the 
commencement, but which, he owned, had probably origi- 
nated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the nation dur- 
ing the Great Kebellion. It is easy to guess in what 
manner debates on great party questions were likely to be 
reported by a man whose judgment was so much disor- 
dered by party spirit. A show of fairness was indeed 
necessary to the prosperity of the Magazine. But John- 
son long afterwards owned that, though he had saved ap- 
pearances, he had taken care that the Whig dogs should 
not have the best of it ; and, in fact, every passage which 
has lived, every passage which bears the marks of his 
higher faculties, is put into the mouth of some member of 
the opposition. 

A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these ob- 
scure labours, he published a work which at once placed 



62 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

him high among the writers of his age. It is probable 
that what he had suffered during his first year in London, 
had often reminded him of some parts of that noble poem 
in which Juvenal had described the misery and degrada- 
tion of a needy man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' 
nests in the tottering garrets which overhung the streets 
of Eome. Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's Satires 
and Epistles had recently appeared, were in every hand, 
and were by many readers thought superior to the origi- 
nals. What Pope had done for Horace, Johnson aspired 
to do for Juvenal. The enterprise was bold, and yet judi- 
cious. For between Johnson and Juvenal there was much 
in common, much more certainly than between Pope and 
Horace. 

Johnson's London appeared without his name in May, 
1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and 
vigorous poem ; but the sale was rapid, and the success 
complete. A second edition was required within a week. 
Those small critics who are always desirous to lower estab- 
lished reputations, ran about proclaiming that the anony- 
mous satirist was superior to Pope in Pope's own peeuliar 
department of literature. It ought to be remembered, to 
the honour of Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause 
with which the appearance of a rival genius was wel- 
comed. He made inquiries about the author of London. 
Such a man, he said, could not long be concealed. The 
name was soon discovered ; and Pope, with great kind- 
ness, exerted himself to obtain an academical degree and 
the mastership of a grammar-school for the poor young 
poet. The attempt failed, and Johnson remained a book- 
seller's hack. 

It does not appear that these two men, the most emi- 
nent writer of the generation which was going out, and 
the most eminent writer of the generation which was com- 
ing in, ever saw each other. They lived in very different 
circles, one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by 
starving pamphleteers and indexmakers. Among John- 
son's associates at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, 
when his shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sit- 
ting up in bed, with his arms through two holes in his 
blanket, who composed very respectable sacred poetry 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 63 

when he was sober, and who was at last run over by a 
hackney coach when he was drunk ; Hoole, surnamed the 
metaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending to his mea- 
sures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the board 
where he sate cross-legged ; and the penitent impostor, 
George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a hum- 
ble lodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian 
fathers, indulged himself at night with literary and theo- 
logical conversation at an alehouse in the city. But the 
most remarkable of the persons with whom at this time 
Johnson consorted, was Eichard Savage, an earl's son, a 
shoemaker's apprentice, wdio had seen life in all its forms, 
who had feasted among blue ribands in Saint James's 
Square, and had lain with fifty pounds weight of irons on 
his legs, in the condemned ward of Newgate. This man 
had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into 
abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. 
His patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged 
by the riotous profusion with which he squandered their 
bounty, and the ungrateful insolence with which he reject- 
ed their advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on 
venison and Champagne whenever he had been so fortu- 
nate as to borrow a guinea. If his questing had been un- 
successful, he appeased the rage of hunger with some 
scraps of broken meat, and lay down to rest under the 
Piazza of Covent Garden in warm weather, and, in cold 
weather, as near as he could get to the furnace of a glass 
house. Yet, in his misery, he was still an agreeable com- 
panion. He had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes about 
that gay and brilliant world from which he was now an 
outcast. Ke had observed the great men of both parties 
in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders of op- 
position without the mask of patriotism, and had heard 
the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not 
over-decent. During some months Savage lived in the 
closest familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends 
parted, not without tears. Johnson remained in London 
to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the west of England, 
lived there as he had lived everywhere, and, in 1743, died, 
penniless and heart-broken, in Bristol gaol. 

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was 



64 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

strongly excited about his extraordinary character, and his 
not less extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared 
widely different from the catchpenny lives of eminent men 
which were then a staple article of manufacture in Grub 
Street. The style was indeed deficient in ease and vari- 
ety ; and the writer was evidently too partial to the Latin 
element of our language. But the little work, with all 
its faults, was a masterpiece. No finer specimen of lite- 
rary biography existed in any language, living or dead ; 
and a discerning critic might have confidently predicted 
that the author was destined to be the founder of a new 
school of English eloquence. 

The Life of Savage was anonymous ; but it was well 
known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer. 
During the three years which followed, he produced no 
important work ; but he was not, and indeed could not be, 
idle. The fame of his abilities and learning continued -to 
grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and 
genius ; and the praise of Warburton was then no light 
thing. Such was Johnson's reputation, that, in 1747, 
several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in 
the arduous work of preparing a Dictionary of the Eng- 
lish Language, in two folio volumes. The sum which 
they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred guineas ; 
and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men of 
letters who assisted him in the humbler parts of his task. 

The Prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the 
Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebra- 
ted for the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his 
wit, and the delicacy of his taste. He was acknowledged 
to be the finest speaker in the House of Lords. He had 
recently governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture, 
with eminent firmness, wisdom, and humanity ; and he 
had since become Secretary of State. He received John- 
son's homage with the most winning affability, and re- 
quited it with a few guineas, bestowed doubtless in a very 
graceful manner, but was by no means desirous to see all 
his carpets blackened with the London mud, and his soups 
and wines thrown to right and left over the gowns of fine 
ladies and the waistcoats of fine gentlemen, by an absent, 
awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and uttered 



SAMUEL JOHjS t SO^. 65 

strange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow, and ate like 
a cormorant. During some time Johnson continued to call 
on his patron, but, after being repeatedly told by the por- 
ter that his lordship was not at home, took the hint, and 
ceased to present himself at the inhospitable door. 

Johnson had flattered himself that he should have com- 
pleted his Dictionary by the end of 1750 ; but it was not 
till 1755 that he at length gave his huge volumes to the 
world. During the seven years which he passed in the 
drudgery of penning definitions and marking quotations 
for transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary labour 
of a more agreeable kind. In 1749 he published th« 
Vanity of Human Wishes, an excellent imitation of the 
Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It is in truth not easy to say 
whether the palm belongs to the ancient or to the modern 
poet. The couplets in which the fall of Wolsey is de- 
scribed, though lofty and sonorous, are feeble when com- 
pared with the wonderful lines which bring before us all 
Kome in a tumult on the day of the fall of Sejanus, the 
laurels on the doorposts, the white bull stalking towards 
the Capitol, the statues rolling down from their pedestals, 
the flatterers of the disgraced minister running to see him 
dragged with a hook through the streets, and to have a 
kick at his carcase before it is hurled into the Tiber. It 
must be owned, too, that in the concluding passage the 
Christian moralist has not made the most of his advan- 
tages, and has fallen decidedly short of the sublimity of 
his Pagan model. On the other hand, Juvenal's Hannibal 
must yield to Johnson's Charles ; and Johnson's vigorous 
and pathetic enumeration of the miseries of a literary life 
must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal's lamentation 
over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero. 

For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes, 
Johnson received only fifteen guineas. 

A few days after the publication of this poem, his tra- 
gedy, begun many years before, was brought on the stage. 
His pupil, David Garrick, had, in 1741, made his appear- 
ance on a humble stage in Goodman's Fields, had at once 
risen to the first place among actors, and was now, after 
several years of almost uninterrupted success, manager of 
Drury Lane Theatre. The relation between him and his 



66 MACAULAY's MISCELLANEOUS WKITTtfGS. 

old preceptor was of a very singular kind. They repelled 
each other strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. 
Nature had made them of very different clay ; and circum- 
stances had fully brought out the natural peculiarities of 
both. Sudden prosperity had turned Garrick's head. 
Continued adversity had soured Johnson's temper. John- 
son saw with more envy than became so great a man the 
villa, the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet, which the 
little mimic had got by repeating, with grimaces and ges- 
ticulations, what wiser men had written ; and the exqui- 
sitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought 
that, while all the rest of the world was applauding him, 
he could obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion it 
was impossible to despise, scarcely any compliment not 
acidulated with scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had so 
many early recollections in common, and sympathized with 
each other on so many points on which they sympathized 
with nobody else in the vast population of the capital, that, 
though the master was often provoked by the monkey-like 
impertinence of the pupil, and the pupil by the bearish 
rudeness of the master, they remained friends till they 
were parted by death. Garrick now brought Irene out,-* 
with alterations sufficient to displease the author, yet not 
sufficient to make the piece pleasing to the audience. The 
public, however, listened, with little emotion, but with 
much civility, to five acts of monotonous declamation. 
After nine representations the play was withdrawn. It is, 
indeed, altogether unsuited to the stage, and, even when 
perused in the closet, will be found hardly worthy of the 
author. He had not the slightest notion of what blank 
verse should be. A change in the last syllable of every 
other line would make the versification of the Vanity of 
Human Wishes closely resemble the versification of Irene. 
The poet, however, cleared, by his benefit nights, and by 
the sale of the copyright of his tragedy, about three hun- 
dred pounds, then a great sum in his estimation. 

About a year after the representation of Irene, he be- 
gan to publish a series of short essays on morals, manners, 
and literature. This species of composition had been 
brought into fashion by the success of the Tatler, and by 
the still more brilliant success of the Spectator. A crowd 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 67 

of small writers had vainly attempted to rival Addison. 
The Lay Monastery, the Censor, the Freethinker, the 
Plain Dealer, the Champion, and other works of the same 
kind, had had their short day. None of them had ob- 
tained a permanent place in our literature ; and they are 
now to be found only in the libraries of the curious. At 
length Johnson undertook the adventure in which so many 
aspirants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year after the 
appearance of the last number of the Spectator, appeared 
the first number of the Eambler. From March 1750 to 
March 1752, this paper continued to come out every Tues- 
day and Saturday. 

From the first the Eambler was enthusiastically ad- 
mired by a few eminent men. Kichardson, when only five 
numbers had appeared, pronounced it equal, if not supe- 
rior to the Spectator. Young and Hartley expressed their 
approbation not less warmly. Bubb Dodington, among 
whose many faults indifference to the claims of genius and 
learning cannot be reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of 
the writer. In consequence, probably, of the good offices 
of Dodington, who was then the confidential adviser of 
Prince Frederic, two of his Eoyal Highness' s gentlemen 
carried a gracious message to the printing-office, and or- 
dered seven copies for Leicester House. But these over- 
tures seem to have been very coldly received. Johnson 
had had enough of the patronage of the great to last him 
all his life, and was not disposed to haunt any other door 
as he had haunted the door of Chesterfield. 

By the public the Eambler was at first very coldly re- 
ceived. Though the price of a number was only two- 
pence, the sale did not amount to five hundred. The 
profits were therefore very small. But as soon as the fly- 
ing leaves were collected and reprinted, they became pop- 
ular. The author lived to see thirteen thousand copies 
spread over England alone. Separate editions were pub- 
lished for the Scotch and Irish markets. A large party 
pronounced the style perfect, so absolutely perfect, that in 
some essays it would be impossible for the writer himself 
to alter a single word for the better. Another party, not 
less numerous, vehemently accused him of having corrupted 
the purity of the English tongue. The best critics admitted 



68 MACAULAY'S miscellaneous whitings. 

tliat his diction was too monotonous, too obviously artificial, 
and now and then turgid even to absurdity. But they did 
justice to the acuteness of his observations on morals and 
manners, to the constant precision and frequent brilliancy 
of his language, to the weighty and magnificent eloquence 
of many serious passages, and to the solemn yet pleasing 
humour of some of the lighter papers. On the question 
of precedence between Addison and Johnson, a question 
which, seventy years ago, was much disputed, posterity 
has pronounced a decision from which there is no appeal. 
Sir Koger, his chaplain and his butler, Will Wimble and 
Will Honeycomb, the Vision of Mirza, the Journal of the 
Ketired Citizen, the Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, 
the Loves of Hilpah and Shalum, the Visit to the Ex- 
change, and the Visit to the Abbey, are known to every 
body. But many men and women, even of highly culti- 
vated minds, are unacquainted with Squire Bluster and 
Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Venus tulus, the Allegory of 
Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of the Eevolutions of a 
Garret, and the sad fate of Aningait and Ajut. 

The last Kambier was written in a sad and gloomy 
hour. Mrs. Johnson had been given over by the physi- 
cians. Three days later she died. She left her husband 
almost brokenhearted. Many people had been surprised 
to see a man of his genius and learning stooping to every 
drudgery, and denying himself almost every comfort, for 
the purpose of supplying a silly, affected old woman, with 
superfluities, which she accepted with but little gratitude. 
But all his affection had been concentrated on her. He 
had neither brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. 
To him she was beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as 
Lady Mary. Her opinion of his writings was more im- 
portant to him than the voice of the pit of Drury Lane 
Theatre, or the judgment of the Monthly Eeview. The 
chief support which had sustained him through the most 
arduous labor of his life, was the hope that she would en- 
joy the fame and the profit which he anticipated from his 
Dictionary. She was gone ; and in that vast labyrinth of 
streets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings, 
he was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to set him- 
self, as he expressed it, doggedly to work. After three 



SMttTHIL JOHNSON. 69 

more laborious years, the Dictionary was at length com- 
plete. 

It had been generally supposed that this great work 
would be dedicated to the eloquent and accomplished no- 
bleman to whom the Prospectus had been addressed. He 
well knew the value of such a compliment ; and therefore 
when the day of publication drew near, he exerted him- 
self to soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time of 
delicate and judicious kindness, the pride which he had so 
cruelly wounded. Since the Eamblers had ceased to ap- 
pear, the town had been entertained by a journal called 
The World, to which many men of high rank and fashion 
contributed. In two successive numbers of the World, the 
Dictionary was, to use the modern phrase, puffed with 
wonderful skill. The writings of Johnson were warmly 
praised. It was proposed that he should be invested with 
the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over our lan- 
guage, and that his decisions about the meaning and spell- 
ing of words should be received as final. His two folios, 
it was said, would of course be bought by every body who 
could afford to buy them. It was soon known that these 
papers were written by Chesterfield. But the just resent- 
ment of Johnson was not to be so appeased. In a letter 
written with singular energy and dignity of thought and 
language, he repelled the tardy advances of his patron. 
The Dictionary came forth without a dedication. In the 
preface the author truly declared that he owed nothing to 
the great, and described the difficulties with which he had 
been left to struggle, so forcibly and pathetically, that the 
ablest and most malevolent of all the. enemies of his fame, 
Home Tooke, never could read that passage without 
tears. 

The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, 
and something more than justice. The best lexicographer 
may well be content if his productions are received by the 
world with cold esteem. But Johnson's Dictionary was 
hailed with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has 
ever excited. It was indeed the first dictionary which 
could be read with pleasure. The definitions show so 
much acuteness of thought and command of language, and 
the passages quoted from poets, divines, and philosophers 



*I0 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

are so skilfully selected, that a leisure hour may always be 
very agreeably spent in turning over the pages. The 
faults of the book resolve themselves, for the most part, 
into one great fault. Johnson was a wretched etymolo- 
gist. He knew little or nothing of any Teutonic lan- 
guage except English, which indeed, as he wrote it, 
was scarcely a Teutonic laguage ; and thus he was abso- 
lutely at the mercy of Junius and Skinner. 

4 The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, add- 
ed nothing to his pecuniary means.' The fifteen hundred 
guineas which the booksellers had agreed to pay him, had 
been advanced and spent before the last sheets issued from 
the press. It is painful to relate that, twice in the course 
of the year which followed the publication of this great 
work, he was arrested and carried to spunging-houses, and 
that he was twice indebted for his liberty to his excellent 
friend Kichardson. It was still necessary for the man who 
had been formally saluted by the highest authority as Dic- 
tator of the English language to supply his wants by con- 
stant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. He proposed to 
bring out an edition of Shakspeare by subscription ; and 
many subscribers sent in their names and laid down their 
money ; but he soon found the task so little to his taste, that 
he turned to more attractive employments. He contributed 
many papers to a new monthly journal, which was called 
the Literary Magazine. Few of these papers have much 
interest ; but among them was the very best thing that he 
ever wrote, a masterpiece both of reasoning and of satiri- 
cal pleasantry, the review of Jenyns's Inquiry into the Na- 
ture and Origin of Evil. 

In the spring of 1758, Johnson put forth the first of a 
series of essays, entitled the Idler. During two years, 
these essays continued to appear weekly. They were 
eagerly read, widely circulated, and, indeed, impudently 
pirated while they were still in the original form, and had 
a large sale when collected into volumes. The Idler may 
be described as a second part of the Kambler, somewhat 
livelier and somewhat weaker than the first part. 

While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, 
who had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. 
It was long since he had seen her ; but he had not failed 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. Tl 

to contribute largely, out of his small means, to her com- 
fort. In order to defray the charges of her funeral, and 
to pay some debts which she had left, he wrote a little 
book in a single week, and sent off the sheets to the press 
without reading them over. A hundred pounds were paid 
him for the copyright ; and the purchasers had great cause 
to be pleased with their bargain ; for the book was* Eas- 
selas. 

The success of Easselas was great,, though such ladies 
as Miss Lydia Languish must have been grievously disap- 
pointed when they found that the new volume from the 
circulating library was little more than a dissertation on 
the author's favourite theme, the Vanity of Human Wish- 
es ; that the Prince of Abyssinia was without a mistress, 
and the Princess without a lover ; and that the story set 
the hero and the heroine down exactly where it had taken 
them up. The style was the subject of much eager con- 
troversy. The Monthly Keview and the Critical Eeview 
took different sides. Many readers pronounced the writer 
a pompous pedant, who would never use a word of two 
syllables where it was possible to use a word of six, and 
who could not make a waiting-woman relate her adven- 
tures, without balancing every noun with another noun, 
and every epithet with another epithet. Another party, 
not less zealous, cited with delight numerous passages in 
which weighty meaning was expressed with accuracy and 
illustrated with splendour. And both the censure and the 
praise were merited. # 

About the plan of Easselas little was said by the crit- 
ics ; and yet the faults of the plan might seem to invite 
severe criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shak- 
speare for neglecting the proprieties of time and place, 
and for ascribing to one age or nation the manners and 
opinions of another. Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in 
this way more grievously than Johnson. Easselas and 
Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are evidently meant to be 
Abyssinians of the eighteenth century: for the Europe 
which Imlac describes is the Europe of the eighteenth cen- 
tury ; and the inmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly 
of that law of gravitation which Newton discovered, and 
which was not fully received even at Cambridge till the 



72 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

eighteenth, century. What a real company of Abyssinians 
would have been, may be learned from Brace's Travels. 
But Johnson, not content with turning filthy savages, ig- 
norant of their letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut 
from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent and en- 
lightened as himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies 
as highly accomplished as Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, 
transferred the whole domestic system of England to 
Egypt. Into a land of harems, a land of polygamy, a 
land where women are married without ever being seen, 
he introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our ball- 
rooms. In a land were there is boundless liberty of di- 
vorce, wedlock is described as the indissoluble compact. 
" A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought to- 
gether by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, 
go home, and dream of each other. Such," says Basselas, 
" is the common process of marriage." Such it may have 
been, and may still be, in London, but assuredly not at 
Cairo. A writer who was guilty of such improprieties, 
had little right to blame the poet who made Hector quote 
Aristotle, and represented Julio Eomano as flourishing in 
the days of the oracle of Delphi. 

By such exertions as have been described, Johnson 
supported himself till the year 1762. In that year a great 
change in his circumstances took place. He had from a 
child been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His Jaco- 
bite prejudices had been exhibited with little disguise both 
in his works and in his conversation. Even in his massy 
and elaborate Dictionary, he had, with a strange want of 
taste and judgment, inserted bitter and contumelious re- 
flections on the Whig party. The excise, which was a fa- 
vourite resource of Whig financiers, he had designated as 
a hateful tax. He had railed against the commissioners 
of excise in language so coarse that they had seriously 
thought of prosecuting him. He had with difficulty been 
prevented from holding up the Lord Privy Seal by name 
as an example of the meaning of the word " renegade." 
A pension he had defined as pay given to a state hireling 
to betray his country ; a pensioner as a slave of state hired 
by a stipend to obey a master. It seemed unlikely that 
the author of these definitions would himself be pensioned. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 73 

But that was a time of wonders. George the Third had 
ascended the throne ; and had, in the course of a few 
months, disgusted many of the old friends, and conciliated 
many of the old enemies of his house. The city was be- 
coming mutinous. Oxford was becoming loyal. Caven- 
dishes and Bentincks were murmuring. Somersets and 
Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The head of 
the treasury was now Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and 
could have no objection to Johnson's Toryism. Bute 
wished to be thought a patron of men of letters ; and 
Johnson was one of the most eminent and one of the most 
needy men of letters in Europe. A pension of three hun- 
dred a year was graciously offered, and with very little 
hesitation accepted. 

This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way 
of life. For the first time since his boyhood he no longer 
felt the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was 
at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety and drudgery, to 
indulge his constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till two 
in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in the 
morning, without fearing either the printer's devil or the 
sheriff's officer. 

One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to 
perform. He had received large subscriptions for his 
promised edition of Shakspeare ; he had lived on those 
subscriptions during some years ; and he could not without 
disgrace omit to perform his part of the contract. His 
friends repeatedly exhorted him to make an effort ; and he 
repeatedly resolved to do so. But, notwithstanding their 
exhortations and his resolutions, month followed month, 
year followed year, and nothing was done. He prayed 
fervently against his idleness ; he determined, as often as 
he received the sacrament, that he would no longer doze 
away and trifle away his time ; but the spell under which 
he lay resisted prayer and sacrament. His private notes 
at this time are made up of self-reproaches. " My indo- 
lence," he wrote on Easter eve in 1764, "has sunk into 
grossest sluggishness. A kind of strange oblivion has 
overspread me, so that I know not what has become of the 
last year." Easter 1765 came, and found him still in the 
same state. " My time," he wrote, " has been unprofitably 
4 



74 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WBITHSrGS. 

spent, and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. 
My memory grows confused, and I know not how the days 
pass over me." Happily for his honour, the charm which 
held him captive was at length broken by no gentle or 
friendly hand. He had been weak enough to pay serious 
attention to a story about a ghost which haunted a house 
in Cock Lane, and had actually gone himself, with some 
of his friends, at one in the morning, to St. John's Church, 
Clerkenwell, in the hope of receiving a communication 
from the perturbed spirit. But the spirit, though adjured 
with all solemnity, remained obstinately silent; and it 
soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven had been 
amusing herself by making fools of so many philosophers. 
Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk with popu- 
larity, and burning with party spirit, was looking for some 
man of established fame and Tory politics to insult, cele- 
brated the Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, nicknamed 
Johnson Pomposo, asked where the book was which had 
been so long promised and so liberally paid for, and di- 
rectly accsued the great moralist of cheating. This terri- 
ble word proved effectual ; and in October 1765 appeared, 
after a delay of nine years, the new edition of Shak- 
speare. 

This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, 
but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and learn- 
ing. The preface, though it contains some good passages, 
is not in his best manner. The most valuable notes are 
those in which he had an opportunity of showing how at- 
tentively he had during many years observed human life 
and human nature. The best specimen is the note on the 
character of Polonius. Nothing so good is to be found 
even in Wilhelm Meister's admirable examination of 
Hamlet. But here praise must end. It would be difficult 
to name a more slovenly, a more worthless edition of any 
great classic. The reader may turn over play after play 
without finding one happy conjectural emendation, or one 
ingenious and satisfactory explanation of a passage which 
had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had, in his 
Prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly fitted for 
the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as a 
lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 75 

view of the English language than any of his predecessors. 
That his knowledge of our literature was extensive, is in- 
disputable. But, unfortunately, he had altogether neg- 
lected that very part of our literature with which it is 
especially desirable that an editor of Shakspeare should be 
conversant. It is dangerous to assert a negative. Yet 
little will be risked by the assertion, that in the two folio 
volumes of the English Dictionary, there is not a single 
passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan age, 
except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quota- 
tions are few. Johnson might easily, in a few months, 
have made himself well acquainted with every old play 
that was extant. But it never seems to have occurred to 
him, that this was a necessary preparation for the work 
which he had undertaken. He would doubtless have ad- 
mitted that it would be the height of absurdity in a man 
who was not familiar with the works of iEschylus and 
Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ven- 
tured to publish an edition of Shakspeare, without having 
ever in his life, as far as can be discovered, read a single 
scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, Marlow, 
Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy and 
scurrilous. Those who most loved and honoured him, had 
little to say in praise of the manner in which he had dis- 
charged the duty of a commentator. He had, however, 
acquitted himself of a debt which had long lain heavy on 
his conscience, and he sank back into the repose from 
which the sting of satire had roused him. He long con- 
tinued to live upon the fame which he had already won. 
He was honoured by the University of Oxford with a Doc- 
tor's degree, by the Eoyal Academy with a Professorship, 
and by the King with an interview, in which his Majesty 
most graciously expressed a hope that so excellent a writer 
would not cease to write. In the interval, however, be- 
tween 1765 and 1775, Johnson published only two or 
three political tracts, the longest of which he could have 
produced in forty-eight hours, if he had worked as he 
worked on the Life of Savage and on Easselas. 

But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was ac- 
tive. The influence exercised by his conversation, directly 
upon those with whom he lived, and indirectly on the 



76 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

whole literary world, was altogether without a parallel. 
His colloquial talents were indeed of the highest order. 
He had strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humour, im- 
mense knowledge of literature and of life, and an infinite 
store of curious anecdotes. As respected style, he spoke 
far better than he wrote. Every sentence which dropped 
from his lips was as correct in structure as the most nicely 
balanced period of the Eambler. But in his talk there 
were no pompous triads, and little more than a fair pro- 
portion of words in osity and ation. All was simplicity, 
ease and vigour. He uttered his short, weighty, and 
pointed sentences with a power of voice, and a justness 
and energy of emphasis, of which the effect was rather in- 
creased than diminished by the rollings of his huge form, 
and by the asthmatic gaspings and puffings in which the 
peals of his eloquence generally ended. Nor did the lazi- 
ness which made him unwilling to sit down to his desk 
prevent him from giving instruction or entertainment 
orally. To discuss questions of taste, of learning, of cas- 
uistry, in language so exact and so forcible that it might 
have been printed without the alteration of a word, was to 
him no exertion, but a pleasure. Pie loved, as he said, to 
fold his legs and have his talk out. He was ready to be- 
stow the overflowings of his full mind on anybody who 
would start a subject, on a fellow-passenger in a stage- 
coach, or on the person who sate at the same table with 
him in an eating-house. But his conversation was no- 
where so brilliant and striking, as when he was surround- 
ed by a few friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled 
them, as he once expressed it, to send him back every ball 
that he threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed them- 
selves into a club, which gradually became a formidable 
power in the commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pro- 
nounced by this conclave on new books, were speedily 
known over all London, and were sufficient to sell off a 
whole edition in a day, or to condemn the sheets to the 
service of the trunk-maker and the pastry-cook. Nor shall 
we think this strange when we consider what great and 
various talents and acquirements met in the little frater- 
nity. Goldsmith was the representative of poetry and 
light literature, Eeynolds of the arts, Burke of political 



samijel johis t so:n t . 77 

eloquence and political philosophy. There, too, were Gib- 
bon, the greatest historian, and Jones, the greatest linguist 
of the age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inex- 
haustible pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and his 
consummate knowledge of stage effect. Among the most 
constant attendants were two high-born and high-bred 
gentlemen, closely bound together by friendship, but of 
widely different characters and habits ; Bennet Langton, 
distinguished by his skill in Greek literature, by the or- 
thodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity of his life ; 
and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his 
knowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his 
sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a society was 
not easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predomi- 
nated. Burke might indeed have disputed the supremacy 
to which others were under the necessity of submitting. 
But Burke, though not generally a very patient listener, 
was content to take the second part when Johnson was 
present ; and the club itself, consisting of so many emi- 
nent men, is to this day popularly designated as Johnson's 
club. 

Among the members of this celebrated body was one 
to whom it has owed the greater part of its celebrity, yet 
who was regarded with little respect by his brethren, and 
had not without difficulty obtained a seat among them. 
This was James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to 
an honourable name and a fair estate. That he was a cox- 
comb and a bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, 
was obvious to all who were acquainted with him. That 
he could not reason, that he had no wit, no humour, no 
eloquence, is apparent from his writings. And yet his 
writings are read beyond the Mississippi, and under the 
Southern Cross, and are likely to be read as long as the 
English exists, either as a living or as a dead language. 
Nature had made him a slave and an idolater. His mind 
resembled those creepers which the botanists call parasites, 
and which can subsist only by clinging round the stems 
and imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He must 
have fastened himself on somebody. He might have fas- 
tened himself on Wilkes, and have become the fiercest pa- 
triot in the Bill of Eights Society. He might have fast- 



78 macattlay's miscellakeous weitt^gs. 

ened himself on Whitfield, and have become the loudest 
field preacher among the Calvinistic Methodists. In a 
happy hour he fastened himself on Johnson. The pair 
might seem ill matched. For Johnson had early been 
prejudiced against Bos well's country. To a man of John- 
son's strong understanding and irritable temper, the silly 
egotism and adulation of Boswell must have been as teas- 
ing as the constant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated to be 
questioned ; and Boswell was eternally catechizing him on 
all kinds of subjects, and sometimes propounded such 
questions as, "What would you do, sir, if you were 
locked up in a tower with a baby 1 " Johnson was a wa- 
ter drinker, and Boswell was a winebibber, and indeed 
little better than a habitual sot. It was impossible that 
there should be perfect harmony between two such com- 
panions. Indeed, the great man was sometimes provoked 
into fits of passion, in which he said things which the 
small man, during a few hours, seriously resented. Every 
quarrel, however, was soon made up. During twenty 
years the disciple continued to worship the master : the 
master continued to scold the disciple, to sneer at him, 
and to love him. The two friends ordinarily resided at a 
great distance from each other. Boswell practised in the 
Parliament House of Edinburgh, and could pay only occa- 
sional visits to London. During those visits his chief 
business was to watch Johnson, to discover all Johnson's 
habits, to turn the conversation to subjects about which 
Johnson was likely to say something remarkable, and to 
fill quarto note-books with minutes of what Johnson had 
said. In this way were gathered the materials, out of 
which was afterwards constructed the most interesting bi- 
ographical work in the world. 

Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a 
connection less important indeed to his fame, but much 
more important to his happiness, than his connection with 
Boswell. Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent brewers 
in the kingdom, a man of sound and cultivated under- 
standing, rigid principles, and liberal spirit, was married 
to one of those clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert, 
young women, who are perpetually doing or saying what 
is not exactly right, but who, do or say what they may, 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 79 

are always agreeable. In 1765 the Thrales became ac- 
quainted with Johnson, and the acquaintance ripened fast 
into friendship. They were astonished and delighted by 
the brilliancy cf his conversation. They were flattered by 
finding that a man so widely celebrated, preferred their 
house to any other in London. Even the peculiarities 
which seemed to unfit him for civilised society, his gesticu- 
lations, his rollings, his puffings, his mutterings, the strange 
way in which he put on his clothes, the ravenous eagerness 
with which he devoured ids dinner, his fits of melancholy, 
his fits of anger, his frequent rudeness, his occasional fe- 
rocity, increased the interest which his new associates took 
in him. For these things were the cruel marks left behind 
by a life which had been one long conflict with disease 
and with adversity. In a vulgar hack wTiter, such oddi- 
ties would have excited only disgust. But in a man of 
genius, learning, and virtue, their effect was to add pity 
to admiration and esteem. Johnson soon had an apart- 
ment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more pleas- 
ant apartment at the villa of his friends on Streatham 
Common. A large part of every year he passed in those 
abodes, abodes which must have seemed magnificent and 
luxurious indeed, when compared with the dens in which 
he had generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures 
were derived from what the astronomer of his Abyssinian 
tale called " the endearing elegance of female friendship." 
Mrs. Thrale rallied him, soothed him, coaxed him, and, if 
she sometimes provoked him by her flippancy, made ample 
amends by listening to his reproofs with angelic sweetness 
of temper. When he was diseased in body and in mind, 
she was the most tender of nurses. No comfort that 
wealth could purchase, no contrivance that womanly inge- 
nuity, set to work by womanly compassion, could devise, 
was wanting to his sick room. He requited her kindness 
by an affection pure as the affection of a father, yet deli- 
cately tinged with a gallantry, which, though awkward, 
must have been more flattering than the attentions of a 
crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete, 
of Buck and Maccaroni. It should seem that a full half 
of Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was passed 
under the roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the fam- 



80 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WKITIKGS. 

ily sometimes to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once 
to Wales and once to Paris. But he had at the same time 
a house in one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the 
north of Fleet Street. In the garrets was his library, a 
large and miscellaneous collection of books, falling to 
pieces and begrimed with dust. On a lower floor he some- 
times, but very rarely, regaled a friend with a plain din- 
ner, a veal pie, or a leg of lamb and spinage, and a rice 
pudding. Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during his 
long absences. It was the home of the most extraordinary 
assemblage of inmates that ever was brought together. 
At the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an 
old lady named Williams, whose chief recommendations 
were her blindness and her poverty. But, in spite of her 
murmurs and reproaches, he gave an asylum to another 
lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose 
family he had known many years before in Staffordshire. 
Room was found for the daughter of Mrs. Desmoulins, and 
for another destitute damsel, who was generally addressed 
as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous host called 
Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett, who bled and 
dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and received 
for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and 
sometimes a little copper, completed this strange menage- 
rie. All these poor creatures were at constant war with 
each other, and with Johnson's negro servant Frank. 
Sometimes, indeed, they transferred their hostilities from 
the servant to the master, complained that a better table 
was not kept for them, and railed or maundered till their 
benefactor was glad to make his escape to Streatham, or 
to the Mitre tavern. And yet he, who was generally the 
haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but 
too prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on 
the part of a purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and 
powerful patron, bore patiently from mendicants, who, but 
for his bounty, must have gone to the workhouse, insults 
more provoking than those for which he had knocked down 
Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after 
year Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins, Polly and Le- 
vett, continued to torment him and to live upon him. 

The course of life which has been described was inter- 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 81 

rupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an important 
event. He had early read an account of the Hebrides, 
and had been much interested by learning that there was 
so near him a land peopled by a race which was still as 
rude and simple as in the middle ages. A wish to become 
intimately acquainted with a state of society so utterly 
unlike all that he had ever seen frequently crossed his 
mind. But it is not probable that his curiosity would 
have overcome his habitual sluggishness, and his love of 
the smoke, the mud, and the cries of London, had not 
Boswell importuned him to attempt the adventure, and 
offered to be his squire. At length, in August, 1773, John- 
son crossed the Highland line, and plunged courageously 
into what was then considered, by most Englishmen, as a 
dreary and perilous wilderness. After wandering about 
two months through the Celtic region, sometimes in rude 
boats which did not protect him from the rain, and some- 
times on small shaggy poneys which could hardly bear his 
weight, he returned to his old haunts with a mind full of 
new images and new theories. During the following 
year he employed himself in recording his adventures. 
About the beginning of 1775, his Journey to the Heb- 
rides was published, and was, during some weeks, the chief 
subject of conversation in all circles in which any atten- 
tion was paid to literature. The book is still read with 
pleasure. The narrative is entertaining ; the speculations, 
whether sound or unsound, are always ingenious ; and the 
style, though too stiff and pompous, is somewhat easier 
and more graceful than that of his early writings. His 
prejudice against the Scotch had at length become little 
more than matter of jest ; and whatever remained of the 
old feeling had been effectually removed by the kind and 
respectful hospitality with which he had been received in 
every part of Scotland. It was, of course, not to be ex 
pected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyte- 
rian polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the 
hedgerows and parks of England should not be struck by 
the bareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even 
in censure Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most 
enlightened Scotchmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, 
were well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotch- 



82 MACATTLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS "WAITINGS. 

men were moved to anger by a little unpalatable truth 
which was mingled with much eulogy, and assailed him 
whom they chose to consider as the enemy of their coun- 
try with libels much more dishonourable to their country 
than anything that he had ever said or written. They 
published paragraphs in the newspapers, articles in the 
magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, five shilling books. One 
scribbler abused Johnson for being bleareyed ; another for 
being a pensioner ; a third informed the world that one of 
the Doctor's uncles had been convicted of felony in Scot- 
land, and had found that there was in that country one 
tree capable of supporting the weight of an Englishman. 
Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved in the Jour- 
ney to be an impudent forgery, threatened to take ven- 
geance with a cane. The only effect of this threat was 
that Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery in the most 
contemptuous terms, and walked about, during some time, 
with a cudgel, which, if the impostor had not been too 
wise to encounter it, would assuredly have descended upon 
him, to borrow the sublime language of his own epic poem, 
" like a hammer on the red son of the furnace." 

Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. 
He had early resolved never to be drawn into controversy ; 
and he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastness which 
is the more extraordinary, because he was, both intellec- 
tually and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists 
are made. In conversation he was a singularly eager, 
acute, and pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for 
good reasons, he had recourse to sophistry; and when 
heated by altercation, he made unsparing use of sarcasm 
and invective. But when he took his pen in his hand, his 
whole character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad 
writers misrepresented him and reviled him ; but not one 
of the hundred could boast of having been thought by him 
worthy of a refutation, or even of a retort. The Kenricks, 
Campbells, MacNicols, and Hendersons, did their best to 
annoy him, in the hope that he would give them import- 
ance by answering them. But the reader will in vain 
search his works for any allusion to Kenrick or Campbell, 
to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on vin- 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 83 

dicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the 
combat in a detestable Latin hexameter. 

" Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum." 

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had 
learned, both from his own observation and from literary 
history, in which he was deeplly read, that the place of 
books in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is 
written about them, but by what is written in them ; and 
that an author whose works are likely to live is very un- 
wise if he stoops to wrangle with detractors whose works 
are certain to die. He always maintained that fame was 
a shuttlecock which could be kept up only by being beaten 
back, as well as beaten forward, and which would soon fall 
if there were only one battledore. No saying was oftener 
in his mouth than that fine apophthegm of Bentley, that 
no man was ever written down but by himself. 

Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the 
Journey to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his 
envious assailants could have done, and to a certain extent 
succeeded in writing himself down. The disputes between 
England and her American colonies had reached a point 
at which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil war 
was evidently impending ; and the ministers seem to have 
thought that the* eloquence of Johnson might with advan- 
tage be employed to inflame the nation against the oppo- 
sition here, and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. 
He had already written two or three tracts in defence of 
the foreign and domestic policy of the government ; and 
those tracts, though hardly worthy of him, were much su- 
perior to the crowd of pamphlets which lay on the coun- 
ters of Almon and Stockdale. But his Taxation No 
Tyranny was a pitiable failure. The very title was a silly 
phrase, which can have been recommended to his choice 
by nothing but a jingling alliteration which he ought to 
have despised. The arguments were such as boys use in 
debating societies. The pleasantry was as awkward as 
the gambols of a hippopotamus. Even Boswell was forced 
to own that, in this unfortunate piece, he could detect no 
trace of his master's powers. The general opinion was, 



84 macaulat's miscellaneous writings. 

that the strong faculties which had produced the Diction- 
ary and the Kambler were beginning to feel the effect of 
time and of disease, and that the old man would best con- 
sult his credit by writing no more. 

But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not 
because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote 
Kasselas in the evenings of a week, but because he had 
foolishly chosen, or suffered others to choose for him, a sub- 
ject such as he would at no time have been competent to 
treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He never will- 
ingly read or thought or talked about affairs of state. He 
loved biography, literary history, the history of manners ; 
but political history was positively distasteful to him. The 
question at issue between the colonies and the mother 
country was a question about which he had really nothing 
to say. He failed, therefore, as the greatest men must 
fail when they attempt to do that for which they are un- 
fit ; as Burke would have failed if Burke had tried to write 
comedies like those of Sheridan ; as Keynolds would have 
failed if Eeynolds had tried to paint landscapes like those 
of Wilson. Happily, Johnson soon had an opportunity of 
proving most signally that his failure was not to be as- 
cribed to intellectual decay. 

On Easter eve, 1777, some persons, deputed by a meet- 
ing which consisted of forty of the first booksellers in Lon- 
don, called upon him. Though he had some scruples about 
doing business at that season, he received his visitors with 
much civility. They came to inform him that a new edi- 
tion of the English poets, from Cowley downwards, was in 
contemplation, and to ask him to furnish short biographi- 
cal prefaces. He readily undertook the task, a task for 
which he was pre-eminently qualified. His knowledge of 
the literary history of England since the Kestoration was 
unrivalled. That knowledge he had derived partly from 
t books, and partly from sources which had long been closed ; 
from old Grub Street traditions ; from the talk of forgot- 
ten poetasters and pamphleteers who had long been lying 
in parish vaults ; from the recollections of such men as 
Gilbert Walmesley, who had conversed with the wits of 
Button ; Cibber, who had mutilated the plays of two gen- 
erations of dramatists ; Orrery, who had been admitted to 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 85 

the society of Swift ; and Savage, who had rendered ser- 
vices of no very honourable kind to Pope. The biographer 
therefore sat down to his task with a mind full of matter. 
He had at first intended to give only a paragraph to every 
minor poet, and only four or five pages to the greatest 
name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism overflowed 
the narrow channel. The work, which was originally 
meant to consist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten 
volumes, small volumes, it is true, and not closely printed. 
The first four appeared in 1779, the remaining six in 
1781. 

The lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best of 
Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertaining as 
any novel. The remarks on life and on luman nature are 
eminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are often 
excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, 
well deserve to be studied. For, however erroneous they 
may be, they are never silly. They are the judgments of 
a mind trammelled by prejudice and deficient in sensibil- 
ity, but vigorous and acute. They therefore generally con- 
tain a portion of valuable truth which deserves to be sep- 
arated from the alloy ; and, at the very worst, they mean 
something, a praise to which much of what is called criti- 
cism in our time has no pretensions. 

Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had ap- 
peared in 1774. Whoever, after reading that life, will 
turn to the other lives, will be struck by the difference of 
style. Since Johnson had been at ease in his circumstan- 
ces he had written little and had talked much. When, 
therefore, he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the 
mannerism which he had contracted while he was in the 
constant habit of elaborate composition was less percepti- 
ble than formerly ; and his diction frequently had a collo- 
quial ease which it had formerly wanted. The improve- 
ment may be discerned by a skilful critic in the Journey 
to the Hebrides, and in the Lives of the Poets is so obvi- 
ous that it*cannot escape the notice of the most careless 
reader. 

Among the Lives the best are perhaps those of Cow- 
ley, Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, beyond all 
doubt, that of Gray. 



86 macaulat's miscellaneous writings. 

This great work at once became popular. There was, 
indeed, much just and much unjust censure : but even 
those who were loudest in blame were attracted by the 
book in spite of themselves. Malone computed the gains 
of the publishers at five or six thousand pounds. But the 
writer was very poorly remunerated. Intending at first to 
write very short prefaces, he had stipulated for only two 
hundred guineas. The booksellers, when they saw how 
far his performance had surpassed his promise, added only 
another hundred. Indeed, Johnson, though he did not 
despise, or affect to despise money, and though his strong 
sense and long experience ought to have qualified him to 
protect his own interests, seems to have been singularly 
unskilful and unlucky in his literary bargains. He was 
generally reputed the first English writer of his time. 
Yet several writers of his time sold their copyrights for 
sums such as he never ventured to ask. To give a single 
instance, Kobertson received four thousand five hundred 
pounds for the History of Charles V. ; and it is no disre- 
spect to the memory of Eobertson to say that the History 
of Charles V. is both a less valuable and a less amusing 
book than the Lives of the Poets. 

Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The in- 
firmities of age were coming fast upon him. That inevi- 
table event of which he never thought without horror was 
brought near to him ; and his whole life was darkened by 
the shadow of death. He had often to pay the cruel price 
of longevity. Every year he lost what could never be re- 
placed. The strange dependants to whom he had given 
shelter, and to whom, in spite of their faults, he was 
strongly attached by habit, dropped off one by one ; and, 
in the silence of his home, he regretted even the noise of 
their scolding matches. The kind and generous Thrale 
was no more ; and it would have been well if his wife had 
been laid beside him. But she survived to be the laugh- 
ing-stock of those who had envied her, and to draw from 
the eyes of the old man who had loved her beyond any- 
thing in the world, tears far more bitter than he would 
have shed over her grave. With some estimable, and 
many agreeable qualities, she was not made to be indepen- 
dent. The control of a mind more steadfast than her own 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 87 

was necessary to her respectability. While she was re- 
strained by her husband, a man of sense and firmness, in- 
dulgent to her taste in trifles, but always the undisputed 
master of his house, her worst offences had been imperti- 
nent jokes, white lies, and short fits of pettishness ending 
in sunny good humour. But he was gone ; and she was 
left an opulent widow of forty, with strong sensibility, 
volatile fancy, and slender judgment. She soon fell in 
love with a music-master from Brescia, in whom nobody 
but herself could discover anything to admire. Her pride, 
and perhaps some better feelings, struggled hard against 
this degrading passion. But the struggle irritated her 
nerves, soured her temper, and at length endangered her 
health. Concious that her choice was one which Johnson 
could not approve, she became desirous to escape from his 
inspection. Her manner towards him changed. She was 
sometimes cold and sometimes petulant. She did not con- 
ceal her joy when he left Streatham ; she never pressed 
him to return ; and, if he came unbidden, she received him 
in a manner which convinced him that he was no longer a 
welcome guest. He took the very intelligible hints which 
she gave. He read, for the last time, a chapter of the 
Greek Testament in the library which had been formed by 
himself. In a solemn and tender prayer he commended 
tho house and its inmates to the Divine protection, and, 
with emotions which choked his voice and convulsed his 
powerful frame, left forever that beloved home for the 
gloomy and desolate house behind Fleet Street, where the 
few and evil days which still remained to him were to run 
out. Here, in June, 1783, he had a paralytic stroke, from 
which, however, he recovered, and which does not appear 
to have at all impaired his intellectual faculties. But 
other maladies came thick upon him. His asthma tor- 
mented him day and night. Dropsical symptoms made 
their appearance. While sinking under a complication of 
diseases, he heard that the woman whose friendship had 
been the chief happiness of sixteen years of his life, had 
married an Italian fiddler ; that all London was crying 
shame upon her ; and that the newspapers and magazines 
were filled with allusions to the Ephesian matron and the 
two pictures in Hamlet. He vehemently said that he 



88 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

would try to forget her existence. He never uttered her 
name. Every memorial of her which met his eye he flung 
into the fire. She meanwhile fled from the laughter and 
hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land 
where she was unknown, hastened across Mount Cenis, and 
learned, while passing a merry Christmas of concerts and 
lemonade parties at Milan, that the great man with whose 
name hers is inseparably associated, had ceased to exist. 

He had, in spite of much mental and much bodily afflic- 
tion, clung vehemently to life. The feeling described in that 
fine but gloomy paper which closes the series of his Idlers, 
seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew near. 
He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath more 
easily in a southern climate, and would probably have set 
out for Kome and Naples but for his fear of the expense of 
the journey. That expense, indeed, he had the means of 
defraying ; for he had laid up about two thousand pounds, 
the fruit of labours which had made the fortune of several 
publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon this 
hoard, and he seems to have wished even to keep its exist- 
ence a secret. Some of his friends hoped that the govern- 
ment might be induced to increase his pension to six hun- 
dred pounds a year, but this hope was disappointed, and 
he resolved to stand one English winter more. That win- 
ter was his last. ' His legs grew weaker ; his breath grew 
shorter ; the fatal water gathered fast, in spite of incisions 
which he, courageous against pain, but timid against 
death, urged his surgeons to make deeper and deeper. 
Though the tender care which had mitigated his sufferings 
during months of sickness at Streatham was withdrawn, 
he was not left desolate. The ablest physicians and sur- 
geons attended him, and refused to accept fees from him. 
Burke parted from him with deep emotion. "Windham sate 
much in the sick room, arranged the pillows, and sent his 
own servant to watch at night by the bed. Frances Bur- 
ney, whom the old man had cherished with fatherly kind- 
ness, stood weeping at the door ; while Langton, whose 
piety eminently qualified him to be an adviser and com- 
forter at such a time, received the last pressure of his 
friend's hand within. When at length the moment, dread- 
ed through so many years, came close, the dark cloud 



JAMES I. 89 

passed away from Johnson's mind. His temper became 
unusually patient and gentle ; he ceased to think with ter- 
ror of death, and of that which lies beyond death ; and he 
spoke much of the mercy of God, and of the propitiation 
of Christ. In this serene frame of mind he died on the 
13th of December, 1784. He was laid, a week later, in 
Westminster Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he 
had been the historian, — Cowley and Denham, Dryden and 
Congreve, Gay, Prior, and Addison. 

Since his death the popularity of his works — the Lives 
of the Poets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human Wisnes, 
excepted, — has greatly diminished. His Dictionary has 
been altered by editors till it can scarcely be called his. 
An allusion to his Kambler or his Idler is not readily ap- 
prehended in literary circles. The fame even of Easselas 
has grown somewhat dim. But though the celebrity of his 
writings may have declined, the celebrity of the writer, 
strange to say, is as great as ever. BoswelPs book has 
done for him more than the best of his own books could 
do. The memory of other authors is kept alive by their 
works. But the memory of Johnson keeps many of his 
works alive. The old philosopher is still among us in the 
brown coat with the metal buttons, and the shirt which 
ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, 
drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, 
and swallowing his tea in oceans. No human being who 
has been more than seventy years in the grave is so well 
known to us. And it is but just to say that our intimate 
acquaintance with what he would himself have called the 
anfractuosities of his intellect and of his temper, serves 
only to strengthen our conviction that he was both a great 
and a good man. 



JAMES L 



On the day of the accession of James the First our coun- 
try descended from the rank which she had hitherto held, 
and began to be regarded as a power hardly of the second 
order. During many years the great British monarchy, 



90 macaulay's miscellaneous waitings. 

under four successive princes of the house of Stuart, was 
scarcely a more important member of the European system 
than the little kingdom of Scotland had previously been. 
This, however, is little to be regretted. Of James the 
First, as of John, it may be said, that if his administra- 
tion had been able and splendid, it would probably have 
been fatal to our country, and that we owe more to his 
weaknesses and meannesses than to the wisdom and cour- 
age of much better sovereigns. He came to the throne at 
a critical moment. The time was fast approaching when 
either the king must become absolute, or the parliament 
must control the whole executive administration. Had he 
been, like Henry the Fourth, like Maurice of Nassau, or 
like Gustavus Adolphus, a valiant, active, and politic 
ruler ; had he put himself at the head of the Protestants 
of Europe ; had he gained great victories over Tilly and 
Spinola ; had he adorned Westminster with the spoils of 
Bavarian monasteries and Flemish cathedrals ; had he 
hung Austrian and Castilian banners in St. Paul's, and 
had he found himself, after great achievements, at the head 
of fifty thousand troops, brave, w T ell disciplined, and devo- 
tedly attached to his person, the English Parliament would 
soon have been nothing more than a name. Happily he 
was not a man to play such a part. He began his admin- 
istration by putting an end to the war which had raged 
during many years between England and Spain, and 
from that time he shunned hostilities with a caution which 
was proof against the insults of his neighbours and the 
clamours of his subjects. Not till the last year of his life 
could the influence of his son, his favourite, his Parliament, 
and his people combined, induce him to strike one feeble 
blow in defence of his family and of his religion. It was 
well for those whom he governed that he in this matter 
disregarded their wishes. The effect of his pacific policy 
was, that in his time no regular troops were needed ; and 
that, while France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany, 
swarmed with mercenary soldiers, the defence of our 
island was still confided to the militia. 

As the king had no standing army, and did not even 
attempt to form one, it would have been wise in him to 
avoid any conflict with his people. But such was his in- 



JAMES I. 91 

discretion, that while he altogether neglected the means 
which alone could make him really absolute, he constantly 
put forward, in the most offensive form, claims of which 
none of his predecessors had ever dreamed. It was at this 
time that those strange theories which Filmer afterward 
formed into a system, and which became the badge of the 
most violent class of Tories and High-churchmen, first 
emerged into notice. It was gravely maintained that the 
Supreme Being regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed 
to other forms of government, with peculiar favour ; that 
the rule of succession in order of primogeniture was a 
divine institution, anterior to the Christian, and even to 
the Mosaic dispensation ; that no human power, not even 
that of the whole legislature — no length of adverse pos- 
session, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive 
the legitimate prince of his rights ; that his authority was 
necessarily always despotic ; that the laws by which, in 
England and in other countries, the prerogative was lim- 
ited, were to be regarded merely as concessions which the 
sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure re- 
sume ; and that any treaty into which a king might enter 
with his people was merely a declaration of his present in- 
tentions, and not a contract of which the performance could 
be demanded. It is evident that this theory, though in- 
tended to strengthen the foundations of government, alto- 
gether unsettles them. Did the divine and immutable law 
of primogeniture admit females or exclude them 1 ? On 
either supposition, half the sovereigns of Europe must be 
usurpers, reigning in defiance of the commands of Heaven, 
and might be justly dispossessed by the rightful heirs. 
These absurd doctrines received no countenance from the 
Old Testament ; for in the Old Testament we read that 
the chosen people were blamed and punished for desiring 
a king, and that they were afterward commanded to with- 
draw their allegiance from him. Their whole history, far 
from favouring the notion that primogeniture is of divine 
institution, would rather seem to indicate that younger 
brothers are under the especial protection of Heaven. 
Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob of 
Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse, nor Solo- 
mon of David. Indeed, the order of seniority among 



92 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

children is seldom strictly regarded in countries where 
polygamy is practised. Neither did the system of Filmer 
receive any countenance from those passages of the New 
Testament which describe government as an ordinance of 
God, for the government under which the writers of the 
New Testament lived was not an hereditary monarchy. 
The Koman emperors were republican magistrates, named 
by the Senate. None of them pretended to rule by right 
of birth ; and, in fact, both Tiberius, to whom Christ com- 
manded that tribute should be given, and Nero, whom 
Paul directed the Komans to obey, were, according to the 
patriarchal theory of Government, usurpers. In the Mid- 
dle Ages, the doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right 
would have been regarded as heretical, for it was altogether 
incompatible with the high pretensions of the Church of 
Eome. It was a doctrine unknown to the founders of the 
Church of England. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion 
had strongly, and, indeed, too strongly inculcated submis- 
sion to constituted authority, but had made no distinction 
between hereditary and elective monarchies, or between 
monarchies and republics. Indeed, most of the predeces- 
sors of James would, from personal motives, have regarded 
the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. 
William Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry 
the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard 
the Third, and Henry the Seventh, had all reigned in de- 
fiance of the strict rule of descent. A grave doubt hung 
over the legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It 
was impossible that both Catharine of Arragon and Anne 
Boleyn could have been lawfully married to Henry the 
Eighth, and the highest authority in the realm had pro- 
nounced that neither was so. The Tudors, far from con- 
sidering the law of succession as a divine and unchange- 
able institution, were constantly tampering with it. Henry 
the Eighth obtained an act of Parliament giving him 
power to leave the crown by will, and actually made a will 
to the prejudice of the royal family of Scotland. Edward 
the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a similar 
power, with the full approbation of the most eminent Re- 
formers. Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open 
to grave objection, and unwilling to admit even a rever- 



JAMES I. 93 

sionary right in her rival and enemy the Queen of Scots, 
induced the Parliament to pass a law enacting that who- 
ever should deny the competency of the reigning sovereign, 
with the assent of the estates of the realm, to alter the 
succession, should suffer death as a traitor. But the situ- 
ation of James was widely different from that of Eliza- 
beth. Far inferior to her in abilities and in popularity, 
regarded by the English as an alien, and excluded from 
the throne by the testament of Henry the Eighth, the 
King of Scots was yet the undoubted heir of William the 
Conqueror and of Egbert. He had, therefore, an obvious 
interest in inculcating the superstitious notion that birth 
confers rights anterior to law and unalterable by law. It 
was a notion, moreover, well suited to his intellect and 
temper. It soon found many advocates among those who 
aspired to his favour, and made rapid progress among the 
clergy of the Established Church. 

Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit 
began to manifest itself strongly in the Parliament and in 
the country, the claims of the monarch took a monstrous 
form, which would have disgusted the proudest and most 
arbitrary of those who had preceded him on the throne. 

James was always boasting of his skill in what he 
called kingcraft ; and yet it is hardly possible even to 
imagine a course more directly opposed to all the rules of 
kingcraft than that which he followed. The policy of 
wise rulers has always been to disguise strong acts under 
popular forms. It was thus that Augustus and Napoleon 
established absolute monarchies, while the public regarded 
them merely as eminent citizens invested with temporary 
magistracies. The policy of James was the direct reverse 
of theirs. He enraged and alarmed his Parliament by 
constantly telling them that they held their privileges 
merely during his pleasure, and that they had no more 
business to inquire what he might lawfully do, than what 
the Deity might lawfully do. Yet he quailed before them, 
abandoned minister after minister to their vengeance, and 
suffered them to tease him into acts directly opposed to his 
strongest inclinations. Thus the indignation excited by 
his claims and the scorn excited by his concessions went 
on growing together. By his fondness for worthless min- 



94 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

ions, and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny 
and rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His 
cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly per- 
son and manners, his provincial accent, made him an ob- 
ject of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments 
there was something eminently unkingly. Thus, during 
the whole course of his reign, all the venerable associations 
by which the throne had long been fenced, were gradually 
losing their strength. During two hundred years, all the 
sovereigns who had ruled England, with the single excep- 
tion of the unfortunate Henry the Sixth, had been strong- 
minded, high-spirited, courageous, and of princely bearing. 
Almost all had possessed abilities above the ordinary level. 
It was no light thing that, on the very eve of the decisive 
struggle between our kings and their Parliaments, royalty 
should be exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, 
shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and 
talking in the style alternately of a buffoon and of a peda- 
gogue. 



CHAELES I. 



On the death of James, Charles the First succeeded to the 
throne. He had received from nature a far better under- 
standing, a far stronger will, and a far keener and firmer 
temper than his father's. He had inherited his father's 
political theories, and was much more disposed than his 
father to carry them into practice. He was, like his father, 
a zealous Episcopalian. He was, moreover, what his 
father had never been, a zealous Arminian, and, though no 
papist, liked a papist much better than a Puritan. It 
would be unjust to deny that Charles had some of the 
qualities of a good, and even of a great prince. He wrote 
and spoke, not, like his father, with the exactness of a 
professor, but after the fashion of intelligent and well-edu- 
cated gentlemen. His taste in literature and art was ex- 
cellent, his manner dignified though not gracious, his do- 
mestic life without blemish. Faithlessness was the chief 



AECHBISHOP LAUD. 95 

cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his mem- 
ory. He was, in truth, impelled by an incurable propen- 
sity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem strange that 
his conscience, which, on occasions of little moment, was 
sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached him 
with this great vice. But there is reason to believe that 
he was perfidious, not only from constitution and from 
habit, but also on principle. He seems to have learned 
from the theologians whom he most esteemed, that be- 
tween him and his subjects there could be nothing of the 
nature of mutual contract ; that he could not, even if he 
would, divest himself of his despotic authority ; and that, 
in every promise which he made, there was an implied re- 
servation that such promise might be broken in case of 
necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole judge. 



AECHBISHOP LAUD. 

The ecclesiastical administration was, in the mean time, 
principally directed by William Laud, archbishop of Can- 
terbury. Of all the prelates of the Anglican Church, 
Laud had departed farthest from the principles of the Ke- 
formation, and had drawn nearest to Kome. His theology 
was more remote than even that of the Dutch Arminians 
from the theology of the Calvinists. His passion for cere- 
monies, his reverence for holidays, vigils, and sacred 
places, his ill-concealed dislike of the marriage of ecclesi- 
astics, the ardent and not altogether disinterested zeal 
with which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the rev- 
erence of the laity, would have made him an object of 
aversion to the Puritans, even if he had used only legal 
and gentle means for the attainment of his ends. But his 
understanding was narrow, and his commerce with the 
world had been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, 
quick to feel for his own dignity, slow to sympathize with 
the sufferings of others, and prone to the error, common 
in superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevish and 



96 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

malignant moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his 
direction every corner of the realm was subjected to a 
constant and minute inspection. Every little congrega- 
tion of separatists was tracked out and broken up. Even 
the devotions of private families could not escape the 
vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigour inspire, 
that the deadly hatred of the Church, which festered in 
innumerable bosoms, was generally disguised under an 
outward show of conformity. On the very eve of troubles 
fatal to himself and to his order, the bishops of several 
extensive dioceses were able to report to him that not a 
single dissenter was to be found within their jurisdiction .* 



CHAELES II. 



The restored king was at this time more loved by the peo- 
ple than any of his predecessors had ever been. The ca- 
lamities of his house, the heroic death of his father, his 
own long sufferings and romantic adventures, made him 
an object of tender interest. His return had delivered the 
country from an intolerable bondage. Eecalled by the 
voice of both the contending factions, he was the very man 
to arbitrate between them ; and in some respects he was 
well qualified for the task. He had received from nature 
excellent parts and a happy temper. His education had 
been such as might have been expected to develope his 
understanding, and to form him to the practice of every 
public and private virtue. He had passed through all 
varieties of fortune, and had seen both sides of human 
nature. He had, while very young, been driven forth from 
a palace to a life of exile, penury, and danger. He had, 
at the age when the mind and body are in their highest 
perfection, and when the first effervescence of boyish pas- 
sions should have subsided, been recalled from his wan- 
derings to wear a crown. He had been taught by bitter 
experience how much baseness, perfidy, and ingratitude 

* See Ms Report to Charles for the year 1639. 



CHARLES IT. 97 

may lie hid under the obsequious demeanor of courtiers. 
He had found, on the other hand, in the huts of the poor- 
est, true nobility of soul. When wealth was offered to any 
who would betray him, when death was denounced against 
all who should shelter him, cottagers and serving-men had 
kept his secret truly, and had kissed his hand under his 
mean disguises with as much reverence as if he had been 
seated on his ancestral throne. From such a school it 
might have been expected that a young man who wanted 
neither abilities nor amiable qualities, would have come 
forth a great and good king. Charles came forth from that 
school with social habits, with polite and engaging man- 
ners, and with some talent for lively conversation, addict- 
ed beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond of saunter- 
ing and of frivolous amusements, incapable of self-denial 
and of exertion, without faith in human virtue or in hu- 
man attachment, without desire of renown, and without 
sensibility to reproach. According to him, every person 
was to be bought. But some people haggled more about 
their price than others ; and when this haggling was very 
obstinate and very skilful, it was called by some fine name. 
The chief trick by which clever men kept up the price of 
their abilities was called integrity. The chief trick by 
which handsome women kept up the price of their beauty 
was called modesty. The love of God, the love of coun- 
try, the love of family, the love of friends, were phrases 
of the same sort, delicate and convenient synonyms for 
the love of self. Thinking thus of mankind, Charles nat- 
urally cared very little what they thought of him. Hon- 
our and shame were scarcely more to him than light and 
darkness to the blind. His contempt of flattery has been 
highly commended, but seems, when viewed in connection 
with the rest of his character, to deserve no commenda- 
tion. It is possible to be below flattery as well as above 
it. One who trusts nobody, will not trust sycophants. 
One who does not value real glory will not value its coun- 
terfeit. 

It is creditable to Charles's temper, that, ill as he 

thought of his species, he never became a misanthrope. 

He saw little in men but what was hateful. Yet he did 

not hate them ; nay, he was so far humane that it was 

5 



98 macaulay's miscellaneous "WKITTNGS. 

highly disagreeable to him to see their sufferings or to 
hear their complaints. This, however, is a sort of human- 
ity which, though amiable and laudable in a private man 
whose power to help or hurt is bounded by a narrow 
circle, has in princes often been rather a vice than a vir- 
tue. More than one well-disposed ruler has given up 
whole provinces to rapine and oppression, merely from a 
wish to see none but happy faces round his own board and 
in his own walks. No man is fit to govern great societies 
who hesitates about disobliging the few who have access 
to him for the sake of the many whom he will never see. 
The facility of Charles was such as has, perhaps, never 
been found in any man of equal sense. He was a slave 
without being a dupe. Worthless men and women, to the 
very bottom of whose hearts he saw, and whom he knew 
to be destitute of affection for him, and undeserving of 
his confidence, could easily wheedle him out of titles, 
places, domains, state secrets, and pardons. He bestowed 
much ; yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired 
the fame of beneficence. He never gave spontaneously ; 
but it was painful to him to refuse. The consequence was, 
that his bounty generally went, not to those who deserved 
it best, nor even to those whom he liked best, but to the 
most shameless and importunate suitor who could obtain 
an audience. 

The motives which governed the political conduct of 
Charles the Second differed widely from those by which 
his predecessor and his successor were actuated. He was 
not a man to be imposed upon by the patriarchal theory of 
government, and the doctrine of divine right. He was 
utterly without ambition. He detested business, and 
would sooner have abdicated his crown than have under- 
gone the trouble of really directing the administration. 
Such was his aversion to toil, and such his ignorance of 
affairs, that the very clerks who attended him when he 
sat in council could not refrain from sneering at his frivo- 
lous remarks and at his childish impatience. Neither 
gratitude nor revenge had any share in determining his 
course, for never was there a mind on which both services 
and injuries left such faint and transitory impressions. 
He wished merely to be a king such as Louis the Fifteenth 



CHAELES II. 99 

of France afterward was ; a king who could draw with- 
out limit on the treasury for the gratification of his private 
tastes, who could hire with wealth and honours persons 
capable of assisting him to kill the time, and who, even 
when the state was brought by maladministration to the 
depths of humiliation and to the brink of ruin, could still 
exclude unwelcome truth from the purlieus of his own se- 
raglio, and refuse to see and hear whatever might disturb 
his luxurious repose. For these ends, and for these ends 
alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could be 
obtained without risk or trouble. In the religious disputes 
which divided his Protestant subjects, his conscience was 
not at all interested, for his opinions oscillated in a state 
of contented suspense between infidelity and popery. But, 
though his conscience was neutral in the quarrel between 
the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians, his taste was by 
no means so. His favourite vices were precisely those 
to which the Puritans were least indulgent. He could 
not get through one day without the help of diversions 
which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As a man emi- 
nently well bred, and keenly sensible of the ridiculous, he 
was moved to contemptuous mirth by the Puritan oddities. 
He had, indeed, some reason to dislike the rigid sect. He 
had, at the age when the passions are most impetuous, and 
when levity is most pardonable, spent some months in 
Scotland, a king in name, but in fact a state prisoner in 
the hands of austere Presbyterians. Not content with re- 
quiring him to conform to their worship and to subscribe 
their Covenant, they had watched all his motions, and 
lectured him on all his youthful follies. He had been 
compelled to give reluctant attendance at endless prayers 
and sermons, and might think himself fortunate when he 
was not insolently reminded from the pulpit of his own 
frailties, of his father's tyranny, and of his mother's idol- 
atry. Indeed, he had been so miserable during this part 
of his life, that the defeat which made him again a wan- 
derer might be regarded as a deliverance rather than as a 
calamity. Under the influence of such feelings as these, 
Charles was desirous to depress the party which had re- 
sisted his father. 



100 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 



THE EAKL OF CLAKENDON. 

The person on whom devolved at this time the greater 
part of the labour of governing was Edward Hyde, chan- 
cellor of the realm, who was soon created Earl of Claren- 
don. The respect which we justly feel for Clarendon as a 
writer, must not blind us to the faults which he committed 
as a statesman. Some of those faults, however, are ex- 
plained and excused by the unfortunate position in which 
he stood. He had, during the first year of the Long Par- 
liament, been honourably distinguished among the sena- 
tors who laboured to redress the grievances of the nation. 
One of the most odious of those grievances, the Council of 
York, had been removed in consequence chiefly of his ex- 
ertions. When the great schism took place, when the re- 
forming party and the conservative party first appeared 
marshalled against each other, he, with many wise and 
good men, took the conservative side. He thenceforward 
followed the fortunes of the court, enjoyed as large a share 
of the confidence of Charles the First as the reserved na- 
ture and tortuous policy of that prince allowed to any 
minister, and subsequently shared the exile and directed 
the political conduct of Charles the Second. At the Kes- 
toration, Hyde became chief minister. In a few months 
it was announced that he was closely related by affinity to 
the royal house. His daughter had become, by a secret 
marriage, Duchess of York. His grandchildren might 
perhaps wear the crown. He was raised by this illustrious 
connection over the heads of the old nobility of the land, 
and was, for a time, supposed to be all-powerful. In some 
respects he was well fitted for this great place. No man 
wrote abler state papers. No man spoke with more weight 
and dignity in council and in Parliament. No man was 
better acquainted with general maxims of statecraft. No 
man observed the varieties of character with a more dis- 
criminating eye. It must be added that he had a strong 
sense of moral and religious obligation, a sincere reverence 
for the laws of his country, and a conscientious regard for 
the honour and interest of the crown. But his temper 



THE EAKL OF CLAKEKDON. 101 

was sour, arrogant, and impatient of opposition. Above 
all, lie had been long an exile ; and this circumstance 
alone would have completely disqualified him for the su- 
preme direction of affairs. It is scarcely possible that a 
politician who had been compelled by civil troubles to go 
into banishment, and to pass many of the best years of 
his life abroad, can be tit, on the day on which he returns 
to his native land, to be at the head of the government. 
Clarendon was no exception to this rule. He had left 
England with a mind heated by a fierce conflict which had 
ended in the downfall of his party and of his own fortunes. 
From 1646 to 1660 he had lived beyond sea, looking on 
all that passed at home from a great distance, and through 
a false medium. His notions of public affairs were neces- 
sarily derived from the reports of plotters, many of whom 
were ruined and desperate men. Events naturally seemed 
to him auspicious, not in proportion as they increased the 
prosperity and glory of the nation, but in proportion as 
they tended to hasten the hour of his own return. His 
wish — a wish which he has not disguised — was, that, till 
his countrymen brought back the old line, they might 
never enjoy quiet or freedom. At length he returned ; 
and, without having a single week to look about him, to 
mix with society, to note the changes which fourteen 
eventful years had produced in the national character and 
feelings, he was at once set to rule the state. In such cir- 
cumstances, a minister of the greatest tact and docility 
would probably have fallen into serious errors. But tact 
and docility made no part of the character of Clarendon. 
To him, England was still the England of his youth ; and 
he sternly frowned down every theory and every practice 
which had sprung- up during his own exile. Though he 
was far from meditating any attack on the ancient and 
undoubted power of the House of Commons, he saw with 
, extreme uneasiness the growth of that power. The royal 
prerogative, for which he had long suffered, and by which 
he had at length been raised to wealth and dignity, was 
sacred in his eyes. The Soundheads he regarded both 
with political and with personal aversion. To the Angli- 
can Church he had always been strongly attached, and had 
repeatedly, where her interests were concerned, separated 



102 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS "WRITINGS. 

himself with regret from his dearest friends. His zeal for 
episcopacy and for the Book of Common Prayer, was now 
more ardent than ever, and was mingled with a vindictive 
hatred of the Puritans, which did him little honour either 
as a statesman or as a Christian. 

The minister's virtues and vices alike contributed to 
his ruin. He was the ostensible head of the administra- 
tion, and was therefore held responsible even for those acts 
which he had strongly, but vainly, opposed in council. 
He was regarded by the Puritans, and by all who pitied 
them, as an implacable bigot, a second Laud, with much 
more than Laud's understanding. He had on all occa- 
sions maintained that the Act of Indemnity ought to be 
strictly observed ; and this part of his conduct, though 
highly honourable to him, made him hateful to all those 
Koyalists who wished to repair their ruined fortunes by 
suing the Soundheads for damages and mesne profits. 
The Presbyterians of Scotland attributed to him the down- 
fall of their Church. The papists of Ireland attributed to 
him the loss of their lands. As father of the Duchess of 
York, he had an obvious motive for wishing that there 
might be a barren queen, and he was therefore suspected 
of having purposely recommended one. The sale of Dun- 
kirk was justly imputed to him. For the war with Hol- 
land he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot 
temper ; his arrogant deportment ; the indelicate eagerness 
with which he grasped at riches ; the ostentation with 
which he squandered them ; his picture gallery, filled with 
master-pieces of Vandyke, which had once been the prop- 
erty of ruined Cavaliers ; his palace, which reared its long 
and stately front right opposite to the humbler residence 
of our kings, drew on him much deserved, and some un- 
deserved censure. When the Dutch fleet was in the 
Thames, it was against the chancellor that the rage of the 
populace was chiefly directed. His windows were broken, 
the trees of his garden cut down, and a gibbet set up be- 
fore his door. But nowhere was he more detested than in 
the House of Commons. He was unable to perceive that 
the time was fast approaching when that house, if it con- 
tinued to exist at all, must be supreme in the state ; when 
the management of that house would be the most impor- 



THE EAEL OF CLARENDON. 103 

tant department of politics ; and when, without the help 
of men possessing the ear of that house, it would be im- 
possible to carry on the government. He obstinately per- 
sisted in considering the Parliament as a body in no re- 
spect differing from the Parliament which had been sitting 
when, forty years before, he first began to study law at the 
Temple. He did not wish to deprive the Legislature of 
those powers which were inherent in it by the old Consti- 
tution of the realm ; but the new development of those 
powers, though a development natural, inevitable, and to 
be prevented only by utterly destroying the powers them- 
selves, disgusted and alarmed him. Nothing would have 
induced him to put the great seal to a writ for raising 
ship-money, or to give his voice in council for committing 
a member of Parliament to the Tower on account of words 
spoken in debate ; but when the Commons began to inquire 
in what manner the money voted for the war had been 
wasted, and to examine into the maladministration of the 
navy, he flamed with indignation. Such inquiry, accord- 
ing to him, was out of their province. He admitted that 
the house was a most loyal assembly ; that it had done 
good service to the crown; and that its intentions were 
excellent ; but, both in public and in the closet, he on 
every occasion expressed his concern that gentlemen so 
sincerely attached to monarchy should unadvisedly en- 
croach on the prerogative of the monarch. Widely as 
they differed in -spirit from the members of the Long Par- 
liament, they yet, he said, imitated that Parliament in 
meddling with matters which lay beyond the sphere of the 
estates of the realm, and which were subject to the author- 
ity of the crown alone. The country, he maintained, 
would never be well governed till the knights of shires and 
the burgesses were content to be what their predecessors 
had been in the clays of Elizabeth. All the plans which 
men more observant than himself of the signs of that time 
proposed, for the purpose of maintaining a good under- 
standing between the court and the Commons, he disdain- 
fully rejected as crude projects, inconsistent with the old 
polity of England. Toward the young orators, who were 
rising to distinction and authority in the Lower House, 
his deportment was ungracious ; and he succeeded in mak- 



104 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WEITESTGS. 

ing them, with scarcely an exception, his deadly enemies. 
Indeed, one of his most serious faults was an inordinate 
contempt for youth, and this contempt was the more un- 
justifiable, because his own experience in English politics 
was by no means proportioned to his age ; for so great a 
part of his life had been passed abroad, that he knew less 
of the world in which he found himself on his return than 
many who might have been his sons. 

For these reasons he was disliked by the Commons ; 
for very different reasons he was equally disliked by the 
court. His morals as well as his politics were those of an 
earlier generation. Even when he was a young law stu- 
dent, living much with men of wit and pleasure, his natu- 
ral gravity and his religious principles had to a great ex- 
tent preserved him from the contagion of fashionable de- 
bauchery ; and he w as by no means likely, in advanced 
years and in declining health, to turn libertine. On the 
vices of the young and gay he looked with an aversion al- 
most as bitter and contemptuous as that which he felt for 
the theological errors of the sectaries. He missed no op- 
portunity of showing his scorn of the mimics, revellers, 
and courtesans who crowded the palace ; and the admoni- 
tions which he addressed to the king himself were very 
sharp, and, what Charles disliked still more, very long. 
Scarcely any voice was raised in favour of a minister 
loaded with the double odium of faults which roused the 
fury of the people, and of virtues which annoyed and im- 
portuned the sovereign. Southampton was no more. 
Ormond performed the duties of friendship manfully and 
faithfully, but in vain. The chancellor fell with a great 
ruin. The king took the seal from him ; the Commons 
impeached him ; his head was not safe ; he fled from the 
country ; an act was passed which doomed him to perpet- 
ual exile ; and those who had assailed and undermined 
him, began to struggle for the fragments of his power. 



LOUIS XIV. 105 



LOUIS XIV. 



The personal qualities of the French king added to the 
respect inspired by the power and importance of his king- 
dom. No sovereign has ever represented the majesty of a 
great state with more dignity and grace. He was his own 
prime minister, and performed the duties of that arduous 
situation with an ability and an industry which could not 
be reasonably expected from one who had in infancy suc- 
ceeded to a crown, and who had been surrounded by flat- 
terers before he could speak. He had shown, in an emi- 
nent degree, two talents invaluable to a prince : the talent 
of choosing his servants well, and the talent of appropri- 
ating to himself the chief part of the credit of their acts. 
In his dealings with foreign powers he had some generos- 
ity, but no justice. To unhappy allies who threw them- 
selves at his feet, and had no hope but in his compassion, 
he extended his protection with a romantic disinterested- 
ness, which seemed better suited to a knight-errant than 
to a statesman ; but he broke through the most sacred ties 
of public faith without scruple or shame, whenever they 
interfered with his interest, or with what he called his 
glory. His perfidy and violence, however, excited less 
enmity than the insolence with which he constantly re- 
minded his neighbours of his own greatness and of their 
littleness. He did not at this time profess the austere de- 
votion which, at a later period, gave to his court the aspect 
of a monastery. On the contrary, he was as licentious, 
though by no means as frivolous and indolent, as his 
brother of England. But he was a sincere Koman Catho- 
lic ; and both his conscience and his vanity impelled him 
to use his power for the defence and propagation of the 
true faith, after the example of his renowned predecessors, 
Clovis, Charlemagne, and St. Louis. 



106 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 



THE CABAL. 

It happened by a whimsical coincidence that, in 1671, the 
cabinet consisted of five persons, the initial letters of 
whose names made up the word Cabal : Clifford, Arling- 
ton, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. 

Sir Thomas Clifford was a Commissioner of the Treas- 
ury, and had greatly distinguished himself in the House 
of Commons. Of the members of the Cabal he was the 
most respectable ; for, with a fiery and imperious temper, 
he had a strong though a lamentably perverted sense of 
duty and honour. 

Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, then Secretary of 
State, had, since he came to manhood, resided principally 
on the Continent, and had learned that cosmopolitan in- 
difference to constitutions and religions which is often ob- 
servable in persons whose life has been passed in vagrant 
diplomacy. If there was any form of government which 
he liked, it was that of France ; if there was any church 
for which he felt a preference, it was that of Kome. He 
had some talent for conversation, and some talent, also, 
for transacting the ordinary business of office. He had 
learned, during a life passed in travelling and negotiating, 
the art of accommodating his language and deportment to 
the society in which he found himself. His vivacity in 
the closet amused the king ; his gravity in debates and 
conferences imposed on the public ; and he had succeeded 
in attaching to himself, partly by services and partly by 
hopes, a considerable number of personal retainers. 

Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, were men in 
whom the immorality which was epidemic among the poli- 
ticians of that age appeared in its most malignant type, 
but variously modified by great diversities of temper and 
understanding. Buckingham was a sated man of plea- 
sure, who had turned to ambition as to a pastime. As he 
had tried to amuse himself with architecture and music, 
with writing farces and with seeking for the philosopher's 
stone, so he now tried to amuse himself with a secret ne- 
gotiation and a Dutch war. He had already, rather from 



THE CABAL. 107 

fickleness and love of novelty than from any deep design, 
been faithless to every party. At one time he had ranked 
among the Cavaliers. At another time warrants had been 
out against him for maintaining a treasonable correspond- 
ence with the remains of the Kepublican party in the city. 
He was now again a courtier, and was eager to win the 
favour of the king by services from which the most illus- 
trious of those who had fought and suffered for the royal 
house would have recoiled with horror. 

Ashley, with a far stronger head, and with a far fiercer 
and more earnest ambition, had been equally versatile ; 
but Ashley's versatility was the effect, not of levity, but 
of deliberate selfishness. He had served and betrayed a 
succession of governments ; but he had timed all his 
treacheries so well that, through all revolutions, his for- 
tunes had constantly been rising. The multitude, struck 
with admiration by a prosperity which, while every thing 
else was constantly changing, remained unchangeable, at- 
tributed to him a prescience almost miraculous, and likened 
him to the Hebrew statesman of whom it is written that 
his counsel was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of 
God. 

Lauderdale, loud and coarse both in mirth and anger, 
was perhaps, under the outward show of boisterous frank- 
ness, the most dishonest man in the whole Cabal. He had 
been conspicuous among the Scotch insurgents of 1638, 
and zealous for the Covenant. He was accused of having 
been deeply concerned in the sale of Charles the First to 
the English Parliament, and was therefore, in the estima- 
tion of good Cavaliers, a traitor, if possible, of a worse 
description than those who had sat in the High Court of 
Justice. He often talked with noisy jocularity of the days 
when he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the chief 
instrument employed by the court in the work of forcing 
episcopacy on his reluctant countrymen ; nor did he, in 
that cause, shrink from the unsparing use of the sword, 
the halter, and the boot. Yet those who knew him knew 
that thirty years had made no change in his real senti- 
ments ; that he still hated the memory of Charles the 
First, and that he still preferred the Presbyterian form of 
church government to every other. 



108 MAC AULA Y'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 



THOMAS OSBOKN, EAEL OF DANBY. 

The chief direction of affairs was now intrusted to Sir 
Thomas Osborn, a Yorkshire baronet, who had, in the 
house of Commons, shown eminent talents for business and 
debate. Osborn became Lord Treasurer, and was soon 
created Earl of Danby. He was not a man whose char- 
acter, if tried by any high standard of morality, would 
appear to merit approbation. He was greedy of wealth 
and honours, corrupt himself, and a corrupter of others. 
The Cabal had bequeathed to him the art of bribing Par- 
liaments, an art still rude, and giving little promise of the 
rare perfection to which it was brought in the following 
century. He improved greatly on the plan of the first in- 
ventors. They had merely purchased orators ; but every 
man who had a vote might sell himself to Danby. Yet 
the new minister must not be confounded with the negoti- 
ators of Dover. He was not without the feelings of an 
Englishman and a Protestant ; nor did he, in his solicitude 
for his own interests, ever wholly forget the interests of 
his country and of his religion. He was desirous, indeed, 
to exalt the prerogative, but the means by which he pro- 
posed to exalt it were widely different from those which 
had been contemplated by Arlington and Clifford. The 
thought of establishing arbitrary power, by calling in the 
aid of foreign arms, and by reducing the kingdom to the 
rank of a dependent principality, never entered into his 
mind. His plan was to rally round the monarchy those 
classes which had been the firm allies of the monarchy 
during the troubles of the preceding generation, and 
which had been disgusted by the recent crimes and errors 
of the court. With the help of the old Cavalier interest, 
of the nobles, of the country gentlemen, of the clergy, and 
of the universities, it might, he conceived, be possible to 
make Charles, not, indeed, an absolute sovereign, but a 
sovereign scarcely less powerful than Elizabeth had been. 

Prompted by these feelings, Danby formed the design 
of securing to the Cavalier party the exclusive possession 
of all political power, both executive and legislative. In 



THOMAS OSBORN, EARL OF DANBY. 109 

the year 1675, accordingly, a bill was offered to the Lords, 
which provided that no person should hold any office, or 
should sit in either House of Parliament, without first de- 
claring on oath that he considered resistance to the kingly 
power as in all cases criminal, and that he would never 
endeavour to alter the government either in Church or 
State. During several weeks, the debates, divisions, and 
protests caused by this proposition kept the country in a 
state of excitement. The opposition in the House of 
Lords, headed by two members of the Cabal who were de- 
sirous to make their peace with the nation, Buckingham 
and Shaftesbury, was beyond all precedent vehement and 
pertinacious, and at length proved successful. The bill 
was not indeed rejected, but was retarded, mutilated, and 
at length suffered to drop. 

So arbitrary and so exclusive was Danby's scheme of 
domestic policy. His opinions touching foreign policy did 
him more honour. They were, in truth, directly opposed 
to those of the Cabal, and differed little from those of the 
country party. He bitterly lamented the degraded situa- 
tion into which England was reduced, and vehemently de- 
clared that his dearest wish was to cudgel the French 
into a proper respect for her. So little did he disguise his 
feelings, that, at a great banquet where the most illus- 
trious dignitaries of the State and of the Church were as- 
sembled, he not very decorously filled his glass to the con- 
fusion of all who were against a war with France. He 
would, indeed, most gladly have seen his country united 
with the powers which were then combined against Louis, 
and was for that end bent on placing Temple, the author 
of the Triple Alliance, at the head of the department 
which directed foreign affairs. But the power of the prime 
minister was limited. In his most confidential letters he 
complained that the infatuation of his master prevented 
England from taking her proper place among European 
nations. Charles was insatiably greedy of French gold ; 
he had by no means relinquished the hope that he might, 
at some future day, be able to establish absolute monarchy 
by the help of the French arms ; and for both reasons he 
wished to maintain a good understanding with the court 
of Versailles. 



110 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

Thus the sovereign leaned toward one system of for- 
eign politics, and the minister toward a system diametri- 
cally opposite. Neither the sovereign nor the minister, in- 
deed, was of a temper to pursue any object with undeviat- 
ing constancy. Each occasionally yielded to the impor- 
tunity of the other, and their jarring inclinations and 
mutual concessions gave to the whole administration a 
strangely capricious character. Charles sometimes, from 
levity and indolence, suffered Danby to take s + eps which 
Louis resented as mortal injuries. Danby, on the other 
hand, rather than relinquish his great place, sometimes 
stooped to compliances which caused him bitter pain and 
shame. The king was brought to consent to a marriage 
between the Lady Mary, eldest daughter and presumptive 
heiress of the Duke of York, and William of Orange, the 
deadly enemy of France, and the hereditary champion 
of the Eeformation ; nay, the brave Earl of Ossory, son 
of Ormond, was sent to assist the Dutch with some British 
troops, who, on the most bloody day of the whole war, 
signally vindicated the national reputation for stubborn 
courage. The treasurer, on the other hand, was induced, 
not only to connive at some scandalous pecuniary transac- 
tions which took place between his master and the court 
of Versailles, but to become — unwillingly, indeed, and 
ungraciously — an agent in those transactions. 



SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

Of all the official men of that age, Temple had preserved 
the fairest character. The Triple Alliance had been his 
work. He had refused to take any part in the politics of 
the Cabal, and had, while that administration directed 
affairs, lived in strict privacy. He had quitted his retreat 
at the call of Danby, had made peace between England 
and Holland, and had borne a chief part in bringing 
about the marriage of the Lady Mary to her cousin the 
Prince of Orange. Thus he had the credit of every one 



GEORGE SAYILE, VISCOUNT HALIFAX. Ill 

of the few good things which had been done by the gov- 
ernment since the Eestoration. Of the numerous crimes 
and blunders of the last eighteen years, none could be im- 
puted to Tiim. His private life, though not austere, was 
decorous ; his manners were popular ; and he was not to 
be corrupted either by titles or by money. Something, 
however, was wanting to the character of this respectable 
statesman. The temperature of his patriotism was luke- 
warm. He prized his ease and his personal dignity too 
much, and shrank from responsibility with a pusillanimous 
fear. Nor, indeed, had his habits fitted him to bear a part 
in the conflicts of our domestic factions. He nad reached 
his fiftieth year without having sat in the English Parlia- 
ment ; and his official experience had been almost entirely 
acquired at foreign courts. He was justly esteemed one 
of the first diplomatists in Europe ; but the talents and 
accomplishments of a diplomatist are widely different from 
those which qualify a politician to lead the House of Com- 
mons in agitated times. 



GEOKGE SAVILE, VISCOUNT HALIFAX. 

Among the statesmen of that age, Halifax was, in genius, 
the first. His intellect was fertile, subtle, and capacious. 
His polished, luminous, and animated eloquence, set off by 
the silver tones of his voice, was the delight of the House 
of Lords. His conversation overflowed with thought, fan- 
cy, and wit. His political tracts well deserve to be studied 
for their literary merit, and fully entitle him to a place 
among English classics. To the weight derived from tal- 
ents so great and various, he united all the influence which 
belongs to rank and ample possessions. Yet he was less 
successful in politics than many who enjoyed smaller ad- 
vantages. Indeed, those intellectual peculiarities which 
make his writings valuable, frequently impeded him in the 
contests of active life ; for he always saw passing events, 
not in the point of view in which they commonly appear 



112 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

'1 

to one who bears a part in them, but in the point of view 
in which, after the lapse of many years, they appear to the 
philosophic historian. With such a, turn of cuinc^.he could 
not long continue to act cordially with any body of men. 
All the prejudices, all the exaggerations of b.oth the great 
parties in the state, moved his scorn. He~<despised the 
mean arts and unreasonable clamours of ^demagogues. 
He despised still more 'the Tory doctrines of divine right 
and passive obedience. He sneered impartially at the 
bigotry of the Churchman and at the bigotry of the Puri- 
tan. He was equally unable to comprehend how any man 
should object to saints' days and surplices, and how any 
man should persecute any other man for objecting to them. 
In temper he was what, in our time, is called a Conserva- 
tive. In theory he was a Kepublican. Even when his 
dread of anarchy and his disdain for vulgar delusions led 
him to side for a time with the defenders of arbitrary 
power, his intellect was always with Locke and Milton. 
Indeed, his jests upon hereditary monarchy were some- 
times such as would have better become a member of the 
Calf's Head Club than a privy councillor of the Stuarts. 
In religion he was so far from being a zealot, that he was 
called by the uncharitable an atheist ; but this imputation 
he vehemently repelled ; and in truth, though he some- 
times gave scandal by the way in which he exerted his 
rare powers both of argumentation and of ridicule on se- 
rious subjects, he seems to have been by no means unsus- 
ceptible of religious impressions. 

He was the chief of those politicians whom the two 
great parties contemptuously called Trimmers. Instead 
of quarrelling with this nickname, he assumed it as a title 
of honour, and vindicated, with great vivacity, the dig- 
nity of the appellation. Every thing good, he said, trims 
between extremes. The temperate zone trims between 
the climate in which men are roasted and the climate in 
which they are frozen. The English Church trims between 
the Anabaptist madness and the papist lethargy. The 
English constitution trims between Turkish despotism and 
Polish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but a just temper be- 
tween propensities, any one of which, if indulged to ex- 
cess, becomes vice ; nay, the perfection of the Supreme 



GEORGE SAVILE, VISCOUNT HALIFAX. 113 

Being himself consists in the exact equilibrium of attri- 
butes, none of which could preponderate without disturbing 
the whole moral and physical order of the world.* Thus 
Halifax was a trimmer on principle. He was also a trim- 
mer by the constitution both of his head and of his heart. 
His understanding was keen, skeptical, inexhaustibly fer- 
tile in distinctions and objections ; his taste refined ; his 
sense of the ludicrous exquisite ; his temper placid and 
forgiving, but fastidious, and by no means prone either to 
malevolence or to enthusiastic admiration. Such a man 
could not long be constant to any band of political allies. 
He must not, however, be confounded with the vulgar 
crowd of renegades ; for though, like them, he passed 
from side to side, his transition was always in the direction 
opposite to theirs. He had nothing in common with those 
who fly from extreme to extreme, and who regard the 
party which they have deserted with an animosity far ex- 
ceeding that of consistent enemies. His place was between 
the hostile divisions of the community, and he never wan- 
dered far beyond the frontier of either. The party to 
which he at any moment belonged was the party which, 
at that moment, he liked best, because it was the party 
of which, at that moment, he had the nearest view. He 
was, therefore, always severe upon his violent associates, 
and was always in friendly relations with his moderate op- 
ponents. Every faction, in the day of its insolent and 
vindictive triumph, incurred his censure, and every faction, 
when vanquished and persecuted, found in him a protector. 
To his lasting honour it must be mentioned, that he at- 
tempted to save those victims whose fate has left the deep- 
est stain both on the Whig and on the Tory name. 

He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, 
and had thus drawn on himself the royal displeasure, 
which was indeed so strong that he was not admitted into 
the council of the thirty without much difficulty, and long 
altercation. As soon, however, as he had obtained a foot- 
ing at court, the charms of his manner and of his conver- 

* It will be seen that I believe Halifax to have been the author, 
or at least one of the authors, of the "Character of a Trimmer," 
which, for a time, went under the name of hi3 kinsman, Sir William 
Coventry. 



114 macaulay's miscellaneous whitings. 

sation made him a favourite. He was seriously alarmed 
by the violence of the public discontent. He thought that 
liberty was for the present safe, and that order and legiti- 
mate authority were in danger. He therefore, as was his 
fashion, joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his 
conversion was not wholly disinterested; for study and 
reflection, though they had emancipated him from many 
vulgar prejudices, had left him a slave to vulgar desires. 
Money he did not want, and there is no evidence that 
he ever obtained it by any means which, in that age, even 
severe censors considered as dishonourable ; but rank and 
power had strong attractions for him. He pretended, in- 
deed, that he considered titles and great offices as baits 
which could allure none but fools, that he hated business, 
pomp, and pageantry, and that his dearest wish was to 
escape from the bustle and glitter of Whitehall to the 
quiet woods which surrounded his ancient hall at Eufford ; 
but his conduct was not a little at variance with his profes- 
sions. In truth, he wished to command the respect at 
once of courtiers and of philosophers, to be admired for 
attaining high dignities, and to be at the same time ad- 
mired for despising them. 



EGBERT SPENCER, EARL OF SUNDERLAND. 

Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the 
political immorality of his age was personified in the most 
lively manner. Nature had given him a keen understand- 
ing, a restless and mischievous temper, a cold heart, and 
an abject spirit. His mind had undergone a training by 
which all his vices had been nursed up to the rankest ma- 
turity. At his entrance into public life, he had passed 
several years in diplomatic posts abroad, and had been, 
during some time, minister in France. Every calling has 
its peculiar temptations. There is no injustice in saying 
that diplomatists, as a class, have always been more dis- 
tinguished by their address, by the art with which they 



EOBEET SPENCEE, EAEL OF SUNBEELAND. 115 

win the confidence of those with whom they have to deal, 
and by the ease with which they catch the tone of every 
society into which they are admitted, than by generous 
enthusiasm or austere rectitude ; and the relations between 
Charles and Louis were such that no English nobleman 
could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any pa- 
triotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth 
from the bad school in which he had been brought up, 
cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and 
destitute of all principles. He was, by hereditary connec- 
tion, a Cavalier \ but with the Cavaliers he had nothing 
in common. They were zealous for monarchy, and con- 
demned in theory all resistance ; yet they had " sturdy 
English hearts, which would never have endured real des- 
potism. He, on the contrary, had a languid, speculative 
liking for Eepublican institutions, which was compatible 
with perfect readiness to be in practice the most servile 
instrument of arbitrary power. Like many other accom- 
plished flatterers and negotiators, he was far more skilful 
in the art of reading the characters and practising on the 
weaknesses of individuals, than in the art of discerning 
the feelings of great masses and of foreseeing the approach 
of great revolutions. He was adroit in intrigue ; and it 
was difficult even for shrewd and experienced men, who 
had been amply forewarned of his perfidy, to withstand 
the fascination of his manner, and to refuse credit to his 
professions of attachment ; but he was so intent on observ- 
ing and courting particular persons, that he forgot to study 
the temper of the nation. He therefore miscalculated 
grossly with respect to all the most momentous events of 
his time. Every important movement and rebound of the 
public mind took him by surprise ; and the world, unable 
to understand how so clever a man could be blind to what 
was clearly discerned by the politicians of the coffee-houses, 
sometimes attributed to deep design what were, in truth, 
mere blunders. 

It was only in private conference that his eminent 
abilities displayed themselves. In the royal closet or in a 
very small circle he exercised great influence, but at the 
council board he was taciturn, and in the House of Lords 
he never opened his lips. 



116 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

To govern William, indeed, was not easy. But Sun- 
derland succeeded in obtaining such a measure of favour 
and influence as excited much surprise and some indigna- 
tion. In truth, scarcely any mind was strong enough to 
resist the witchery of his talk and of his manners. Every 
man is prone to believe in the gratitude and attachment 
even of the most worthless persons on whom he has con- 
ferred great benefits. It can therefore hardly be thought 
strange that the most skilful of all flatterers should have 
been heard with favour, when he, with every outward sign 
of strong emotion, implored permission to dedicate all his 
faculties to the service of the generous protector to whom 
he owed property, liberty, life. It is not necessary, how- 
ever, to suppose that the King was deceived. He may 
have thought, with good reason, that, though little confi- 
dence could be placed in Sunderland's professions, much 
confidence might be placed in Sunderland's situation ; and 
the truth is that Sunderland proved, on the whole, a more 
faithful servant than a much less depraved man might 
have been. He did indeed make, in profound secresy, 
some timid overtures towards a reconciliation with James. 
But it may be confidently affirmed that, even had those 
overtures been graciously received, — and they appear to 
have been received very ungraciously, — the twice-turned 
renegade would never have rendered any real service to 
the Jacobite cause. He well knew that he had done that 
which at St. Germains must be regarded as inexpiable. 
It was not merely that he had been treacherous and un- 
grateful. Marlborough had been as treacherous and as 
ungrateful; and Marlborough had been pardoned. But 
Marlborough had not been guilty of the impious hypocrisy 
of counterfeiting the signs of conversion. Marlborough 
had not pretended to be convinced by the arguments of 
the Jesuits, to be touched by divine grace, to pine for 
union with the only true Church. Marlborough had not, 
when Popery was in the ascendant, crossed himself, shrived 
himself, done penance, taken the communion in one kind, 
and, as soon as a turn of fortune came, apostatized back 
again, and proclaimed to all the world that, when he 
knelt at the confessional and received the host, he was 
merely laughing at the King and the priests. The crime 



ROBERT SPENCER, EARL OF SUNDERLAND. 117 

of Sunderland was one which could never be forgiven by 
James ; and a crime which could never be forgiven by 
James was, in some sense, a recommendation to William. 
The Court, nay, the Council, was full of men who might 
hope to prosper if the banished King were restored. 

But Sunderland had left himself no retreat. He had 
broken down all the bridges behind him. He had been 
so false to one side, that he must of necessity be true to 
the other. That he was in the main true tc the govern- 
ment which now protected him, there is no reason to 
doubt ; and, being true, he could not but be useful. He 
was, in some respects, eminently qualified to be at that 
time an adviser of the Crown. He had exactly the tal- 
ents and the knowledge which William wanted. The two 
together would have made up a consummate statesman. 
The master was capable of forming and executing large 
designs, but was negligent of those small arts in which 
the servant excelled. The master saw farther off than 
other men ; but what was near no man saw so clearly as 
the servant. The master, though profoundly versed in the 
politics of the great community of nations, never thorough- 
ly understood the politics of his own kingdom. The ser- 
vant was perfectly well informed as to the temper and the 
organization of the English factions, and as to the strong 
and weak parts of the character of every Englishman of 
note. 

Early in 1693, it was rumoured that Sunderland was 
consulted on all important questions relating to the inter- 
nal administration of the realm : and the rumour became 
stronger when it was known that he had come up to Lon- 
don in the autumn before the meeting of Parliament, and 
that he had taken a large mansion near Whitehall. The 
coffee-house politicians were confident that he was about to 
hold some high office. As yet, however, he had the wis- 
dom to be content with the reality of power, and to leave 
the show to others.* 

* L'Hermitage, September 19 (29), October 2 (12), 1693. 



118 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 



THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH. 

Charles, while a wanderer on the Continent, had fallen 
in at the Hague with Lucy Walters, a Welsh girl of great 
beauty, but of weak understanding and dissolute manners. 
She became his mistress, and presented him with a son. 
A suspicious lover might have had his doubts ; for the lady 
had several admirers, and was not supposed to be cruel to 
any. Charles, however, readily took her word, and poured 
forth on little James Crofts, as the boy was then called, an 
overflowing fondness, such as seemed hardly to belong to 
that easy, but cool and careless nature. Soon after the 
Restoration, the young favourite, who had learned in 
France the exercises then considered necessary to a fine 
gentleman, made his appearance at Whitehall. He was 
lodged in the palace, attended by pages, and permitted to 
enjoy several distinctions which had till then been confined 
to princes of the blood royal. He was married, while still 
in tender youth, to Anne Scott, heiress of the noble house 
of Buccleuch. He took her name, and received with her 
hand possession of her ample domains. The estate which 
he acquired by this match was popularly estimated at not 
less than ten thousand pounds a year. Titles, and favours 
more substantial than titles, were lavished on him. He 
was made Duke of Monmouth in England, Duke of Buc- 
cleuch in Scotland, a Knight of the Garter, Master of the 
Horse, Commander of the first troop of Life Guards, Chief 
Justice of Eyre south of Trent, and Chancsllor of the 
University of Cambridge. Nor did he appear to the pub- 
lic unworthy of his high fortunes. His countenance was 
eminently handsome and engaging, his temper sweet, his 
manners polite and affable. Though a libertine, he won 
the hearts of the Puritans. Though he was known to 
have been privy to the shameful attack on Sir John Cov- 
entry, he easily obtained the forgiveness of the country 
party. Even austere moralists owned that, in such a 
court, strict conjugal fidelity was scarcely to be expected 
from one who, while a child, had been married to another 
child. Even patriots were willing to excuse a headstrong 



THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH. 119 

boy for visiting with immoderate vengeance an insult 
offered to his father; and soon the stain left by loose 
amours and midnight brawls was effaced by honourable 
exploits. When Charles and Louis uinted their forces 
against Holland, Monmouth commanded the English aux- 
iliaries who were sent to the Continent, and approved him- 
self a gallant soldier and a not unintelligent officer. On 
r his return he found himself the most popular man in the 
kingdom. Nothing was withheld from him but the crown ; 
nor did even the crown seem to be absolutely beyond his 
reach. The distinction which had most injudiciously been 
made between him and the highest nobles, had produced 
evil consequences. When a boy, he had been invited to 
put on his hat in the presence chamber, while Howards 
and Seymours stood uncovered round him. When foreign 
princes died, he had mourned for them in the long purple 
cloak, which no other subject, except the Duke of York 
and Prince Eupert, was permitted to wear. It was natural 
that these things should lead him to regard himself as a 
legitimate prince of the house of Stuart. Charles, even 
at a ripe age, was devoted to his pleasures and regardless 
of his dignity. It could hardly be thought incredible that 
he should at twenty have gone through the form of espous- 
ing a lady whose beauty had fascinated him, and who was 
not to be won on easier terms. While Monmouth was still 
a child, and while the Duke of York still passed for a 
Protestant, it was rumoured throughout the country, and 
even in circles which ought to have been well informed, 
that the king had made Lucy Walters his wife, and that, 
if every one had his right, her son would be Prince of 
Wales. Much was said of a certain black box, which, ac- 
cording to the vulgar belief, contained the contract of mar- 
riage. When Monmouth had returned from the Low 
Countries, with a high character for valour and conduct, 
and when the Duke of York was known to be a member 
of a Church detested by the great majority of the nation, 
this idle story became important. For it there was not 
the slightest evidence. Against it there was the solemn 
asseveration of the king, made before his council, and by 
his order communicated to his people ; but the multitude, 
always fond of romantic adventures, drank in eagerly the 



120 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WEITINGS. 

tale of the secret espousals and the black box. Some 
chiefs of the Opposition acted on this occasion as they 
acted with respect to the more odious fable of Oates, and 
countenanced a story which they must have despised. 
The interest which the populace took in him whom they 
regarded as the champion of the true religion, and the 
rightful heir of the British throne, was kept up by every 
artifice. When Monmouth arrived in London at midnight, 
the watchmen were ordered by the magistrates to proclaim 
the joyful event through the streets of the city ; the peo- 
ple left their beds ; bonfires were lighted ; the windows 
were illuminated ; the churches were opened ; and a merry 
peal rose from all the steeples. When he travelled, he 
was everywhere received with not less pomp, and with far 
more enthusiasm, than had been displayed when kings 
had made progresses through the realm. He was escorted 
from mansion to mansion by long cavalcades of armed 
gentlemen and yeomen. Cities poured forth their whole 
population to receive him. Electors thronged round him, 
to assure him that their votes were at his disposal. To 
such a height were his pretensions carried, that he not only 
exhibited on his escutcheon the lions of England and the 
lilies of France without the baton sinister under which, 
according to the laws of heraldry, they were debruised in 
token of his illegitimate birth, but ventured to touch for 
the king's evil. At the same time, he neglected no art of 
condescension by which the love of the multitude could be 
conciliated. He stood godfather to the children of the 
peasantry, mingled in every rustic sport, wrestled, played 
at quarter-staff, and won foot-races in his boots against 
fleet runners in shoes. 

It is a curious circumstance that, at two of the greatest 
conjunctures in our history, the chiefs of the Protestant 
party should have committed the same error, and should 
by that error have greatly endangered their country and 
their religion. At the death of Edward the Sixth, they 
set up the Lady Jane, without any show of birthright, in 
opposition, not only to their enemy Mary, but also to Eliz- 
abeth, the true hope of England and of the Reformation. 
Thus the most respectable Protestants, with Elizabeth at 
their head, were forced to make common cause with the 



LAWRENCE HYDE, EARL OF ROCHESTER. 121 

papists. In tke same manner, a hundred and thirty years 
later, a part of the Opposition, by setting up Monmouth as 
a claimant of the crown, attacked the rights, not only of 
James, whom they justly regarded as an implacable enemy 
of their faith and their liberties, but also of the Prince and 
Princess of Orange, who were eminently marked out, both 
by situation and by personal qualities, as the defenders of 
all free governments and of all Eeformed churches. 



LAWRENCE HYDE, EARL OF ROCHESTER. 

Lawrence Hyde was the second son of the Chancellor 
Clarendon, and was brother of the first Duchess of York. 
He had excellent parts, which had been improved by par- 
liamentary and diplomatic experience ; but the infirmities 
of his temper detracted much from the effective strength of 
his abilities. Negotiator and courtier as he was, he never 
(earned the art of governing or of concealing his emotions. 
When prosperous he was insolent and boastful ; when he 
sustained a check, his undisguised mortification doubled 
the triumph of his enemies ; very slight provocations suf- 
ficed to kindle his anger ; and when he was angry, he said 
bitter things which he forgot as soon as he was pacified, 
but which others remembered many years. His quickness 
and penetration would have made him a consummate man 
of business but for his self-sufficiency and impatience. 
His writings prove that he had many of the qualities of an 
orator, but his irritability prevented him from doing him- 
self justice in debate ; for nothing was easier than to goad 
him into a passion ; and from the moment when he went 
into a passion, he was at the mercy of opponents far infe- 
rior to him in capacity. 

Unlike most of the leading politicians of that genera- 
tion, he was a consistent, dogged, and rancorous party 
man, a Cavalier of the old school, a zealous champion of 
the crown and of the Church, and a hater of Republicans 
and Nonconformists. He had, consequently, a great body 
6 



122 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

of personal adherents. The clergy especially looked on 
him as their own man, and extended to his foibles an in- 
dulgence of which, to say the truth, he stood in some need ; 
for he drank deep ; and when he was in a rage — and he 
very often was in a rage — he swore like a porter. 



SIDNEY GODOLPHIN. 

Godolphtn had been bred a page at Whitehall, and had 
early acquired all the flexibility and the self-possession of 
a veteran courtier. He was laborious, clear-headed, and 
profoundly versed in the details of finance. Every gov- 
ernment, therefore, found in him a useful servant ; and 
there was nothing in his opinions or in his character which 
could prevent him from serving any government. " Sid- 
ney Godolphin," said Charles, " is never in the way, and 
never out of the way." This pointed remark goes far to 
explain Godolphin's extraordinary success in life. 

He acted at different times with both the great political 
parties, but he never shared in the passions of either. 
Like most men of cautious tempers and prosperous for- 
tunes, he had a strong disposition to support whatever ex- 
isted. He disliked revolutions ; and, for the same reason 
for which he disliked revolutions, he disliked counter-revo- 
lutions. His deportment was remarkably grave and re- 
served, but his personal tastes were low and frivolous ; 
and most of the time which he could save from public 
business was spent in racing, card-playing, and cock- 
fighting. 



FKANCIS NOKTH, LOKD GUILDFOKD. 

The moderate and constitutional counsels of Halifax were 
timidly and feebly seconded by Francis North, Lord 
Guildford, who had lately been made keeper of the great 



FRANCIS KORTH, LORD GUILDFORD. 123 

seal. The character of Guildford has been drawn at full 
length by his brother Eoger North, a most intolerant Tory, 
a most affected and pedantic writer, but a vigilant obser- 
ver of all those minute circumstances which throw light 
on the dispositions of men. It is remarkable that the 
biographer, though he was under the influence of the 
strongest fraternal partiality, and though he was evidently 
anxious to produce a most flattering likeness, was yet un- 
able to portray the lord keeper otherwise than as the most 
ignoble of mankind ; yet the intellect of Guildford was 
clear, his industry great, his proficiency in letters and 
science respectable, and his legal learning more than re- 
spectable. His faults were selfishness, cowardice, and 
meanness. He was not insensible to the power of female 
beauty, nor averse from excess in wine ; yet neither wine 
nor beauty could ever seduce the cautious and frugal liber- 
tine, even in his earliest youth,.into one fit of indiscreet 
generosity. Though of noble descent, he rose in his pro- 
fession by paying ignominious homage to all who possessed 
influence in the courts. He became chief justice of the 
Common Pleas, and, as such, was party to some of the foulest 
judicial murders recorded in our history. He had sense 
enough to perceive from the first that Oates and Bedloe 
were impostors ; but the Parliament and the country were 
greatly excited ; the government had yielded to the pres- 
sure ; and North was a man not to risk a good place for 
the sake of justice and humanity. Accordingly, while he 
was in secret drawing up a refutation of the whole ro- 
mance of the Popish Plot, he declared in public that the 
truth of the story was as plain as the sun in heaven, and 
was not ashamed to browbeat, from the seat of judgment, 
the unfortunate Eoman Catholics who were arraigned be- 
fore him for their lives. He had at length reached the 
highest post in the law ; but a lawyer who, after many 
years devoted to professional labour. eD gages. in politics for 
the first time at an advanced period of life, seldom distin- 
guishes himself as a statesman, and Guildford was no ex- 
ception to the general rule. He was, indeed, so sensible 
of his deficiencies, that he never attended the meetings of 
his colleagues on foreign affairs. Even on questions relat- 
ing to his own profession, his opinion had less weight at 



124 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

the council board than that of any man who has ever held 
the great seal. Such as his influence was, however, he 
used it, as far as he dared, on the side of the laws 



JUDGE JEFFKEYS. 

The great seal was left in Guildford's custody; but a 
marked indignity was at the same time offered to him. It 
was determined that another lawyer of more vigour and 
audacity should be called to assist in the administration. 
The person selected was Sir George Jeffreys, Chief Justice 
of the Court of King's Bench. The depravity of this man 
has passed into a proverb, Both the great English parties 
have attacked his memory with emulous violence ; for the 
Whigs considered him as their most barbarous enemy, and 
the Tories found it convenient to throw on him the blame 
of all the crimes which had sullied their triumph. A dili- 
gent and candid inquiry will show that some frightful 
stories which have been told concerning him are false or 
exaggerated ; yet the dispassionate historian will be able 
to make very little deduction from the vast mass of infamy 
with which the memory of the wicked judge has been 
loaded. 

He was a man of quick and vigorous parts, but con- 
stitutionally prone to insolence and to the angry passions. 
When just emerging from boyhood, he had risen into prac- 
tice at the Old Bailey bar, a bar where advocates have al- 
ways used a license of tongue unknown in Westminster 
Hall. Here, during many years, his chief business was to 
examine and cross-examine the most hardened miscreants 
of a great capital. Daily conflicts with prostitutes and 
thieves called out and exercised his powers so effectually 
that he became the most consummate bully ever known in 
his profession. All tenderness for the feelings :>f others, 
all self-respect, all sense of the becoming, were obliterated 
from his mind. He acquired a boundless command of the 
rhetoric in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. 



JUDGE JEFFKEYS. 125 

The profusion of maledictions and vituperative epithets 
which composed his vocabulary, could hardly have been 
rivalled in the fish-market or the bear-garden. His coun- 
tenance and his voice must always have been unamiable ; 
but these natural advantages — for such he seems to have 
thought them — he had improved to such a degree that 
there were few who, in his paroxysms of rage, could 
see or hear him without emotior. Impudence and ferocity 
sat upon his brow. The glare of his eyes had a fascina- 
tion for the unhappy victim on whom they were fixed ; yet 
his brow and eye w T ere said to be less terrible than the 
savage lines of his mouth. His yell of fury, as was said 
by one who had often heard it, sounded like the thunder 
of the judgment clay. These qualificatioL & he carried, 
while still a young man, from the bar to the bench. He 
early became common sergeant, and then recorder of Lon- 
don. As judge at the city sessions he exhibited the same 
propensities which afterward, in a higher post, gained for 
him an unenviable immortality. Already might be re- 
marked in him the most odious vice which is incident to 
human nature, a delight in misery merely as misery. 
There was a fiendish exultation in the way in which he 
pronounced sentence on offenders. Their weeping and 
imploring seemed to titillate him voluptuously ; and he 
loved to scare them into fits by dilating with luxuriant 
amplification on all the details of what they were to suffer. 
Thus, when he had an opportunity of ordering an unlucky 
adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, " Hangman," 
he would exclaim, " I charge you to pay particular atten- 
tion to this lady ! Scourge her soundly, man ! Scourge 
her till the blood runs down ! It is Christmas ; a cold 
time for madam to strip in ! See that you warm her 
shoulders thoroughly ! w * He was hardly less facetious 
when he passed judgment on Ludowick Muggleton, the 
drunken tailor who fancied himself a prophet. " Impu- 
dent rogue ! " roared Jeffreys, " thou shalt have an easy, 
easy, easy punishment ! " One part of this easy punish 
ment was the pillory, in which the wretched fanatic was 
almost killed with brickbats.f 

* Christmas Sessions Paper of 1768. 

f The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit, Part V., chapter v. In 



126 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 

By this time the nature of Jeffreys had been hardened 
to that temper which tyrants require in their worst imple- 
ments. He had hitherto looked for professional advance- 
ment to the corporation of London. He had therefore 
professed himself a Soundhead, and had always appeared 
to be in a higher state of exhilaration when he explained 
to popish priests that they were to be cut down alive, and 
were to see their own bodies burned, than when he passed 
ordinary sentences of death. But, as soon as .ae had got 
all that the city could give, he made haste to sell his fore- 
head of brass and his tongue of venom to the court. 
Chifflnch, who was accustomed to act as broker in infamous 
contracts of more than one kind, lent his aid. He had 
conducted many amorous and many political intrigues, but 
he assuredly never rendered a more scandalous service to 
his masters than when he introduced Jeffreys to Whitehall. 
The renegade soon found a patron in the obdurate and re- 
vengeful James, but was always regarded with scorn and 
disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as they were, had 
no affinity with insolence and cruelty. " That man," said 
the king, "has no learning, no sense, no manners, and 
more impudence than ten carted street-walkers." * Work 
was to be done, however, which could be trusted to no man 
who reverenced law or was sensible of shame ; and thus 
Jeffreys, at an age at which a barrister thinks himself for- 
tunate if he is employed to lead an important cause, was 
made Chief Justice of the King's Bench. 

His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of 
the qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge, 
indeed, was merely such as he had picked up in practice 
of no very high kind ; but he had one of those happily 
constituted intellects which, across labyrinths of sophistry 
and through masses of immaterial facts, go straight to the 
true point. Of his intellect, however, he seldom had the 
full use. Even in civil causes his malevolent and despotic 
temper perpetually disordered his judgment. To enter his 

this work, Ludowick, after his fashion, revenges himself on the 
" bawling devil," as he calls Jeffreys, by a string of curses which Er- 
nulphus might have envied. The trial was in January, 1677. 

* This saying is to be found in many contemporary pamphlets. 
Titus Oates was never tired of quoting it* See his Eitccbv fiuaiAiK^. 



JUDGE JEFFREYS. 127 

court, was to enter the den of a wild beast, which none 
could tame, and which was as likely to be roused to rage 
by caresses as by attacks. He frequently poured forth on 
plaintiffs and defendants, barristers and attorneys, wit- 
nesses and jurymen, torrents of frantic abuse, intermixed 
with oaths and curses. His looks and tones had inspired 
terror when he was merely a young advocate struggling 
into practice. Now that he was at the head of the most 
formidable tribunal in the realm, there were few indeed 
w 7 ho did not tremble before him. Even when he was so- 
ber, his violence was sufficiently frightful ; but, in general, 
his reason was overclouded, and his evil passions stimu- 
lated by the fumes of intoxication. His evenings were 
ordinarily given to revelry. People who saw him only 
over his bottle, would have supposed him to be a man 
gross indeed, sottish, and addicted to low company and 
low merriment, but social and good-humoured. He was 
constantly surrounded on such occasions by buffoons, se- 
lected, for the most part, from among the vilest pettifog- 
gers who practised before him. These men bantered and 
abused each other for his entertainment. He joined in 
their ribald talk, sang catches with them, and, when his 
head grew hot, hugged and kissed them in an ecstasy of 
drunken fondness. But, though wine at first seemed to 
soften his heart, the effect of a few hours later was very 
different. He often came to the judgment-seat, having 
kept the court waiting long, and yet having but half slept 
off his debauch, his cheeks on fire, his eyes staring like 
those of a maniac. When he was in this state, his boon 
companions of the precediug night, if they were wise, kept 
out of his way, for the recollection of the familiarity to 
which he had admitted them inflamed his malignity, and 
he was sure to take every opportunity of overwhelming 
them with execration and invective. Not the least odious 
of his many odious peculiarities, w r as the pleasure which 
he took in publicly browbeating and mortifying those 
whom, in his fits of maudlin tenderness, he had encouraged 
to presume on his favour. 

The services which the government had expected from 
him. were performed, not merely without flinching, but 
eagerly and triumphantly. His first exploit was the ju- 



128 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

dicial murder of Algernon Sidney. What followed was 
in perfect harmony with this beginning. Eespectable 
Tories lamented the disgrace which the barbarity and in- 
decency of so great a functionary brought upon the admin- 
istration of justice ; but the excesses which rilled such men 
with horror were titles to the esteem of James. Jeffreys, 
therefore, after the death of Charles, obtained a seat in 
the cabinet and a peerage. This last honour was a signal 
mark of royal approbation ; for, since the judicial system 
of the realm had been remodelled in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, no chief justice had been a lord of Parliament.* 



THE LAST DAYS OF JEFFEEYS. 

On that terrible day which was succeeded by the Irish 
Night, the roar of a great city disappointed of its revenge 
had followed Jeffreys to the drawbridge of the Tower. 
His imprisonment was not strictly legal ; but he at first 
accepted with thanks and blessings the protection which 
those dark walls, made famous by so many crimes and 
sorrows, afforded him against the fury of the multitude.! 
Soon, however, he became sensible that his life was still in 
imminent peril. For a time he flattered himself with the 
hope that a writ of Habeas Corpus would liberate him 
from his confinement, and that he should be able to steal 
away to some foreign country, and to hide himself with 
part of his ill-gotten wealth from the detestation of man- 
kind ; but, till the government was settled, there was no 
court competent to grant a writ of Habeas Corpus ; and, 

* The chief sources of information concerning Jeffreys are the 
State Trials and North's Life of Lord Guilford. Some txmches of 
minor importance I owe to contemporary pamphlets in verse and prose. 
Such are the Bloody Assizes, the Life and Death of George Lord Jef- 
freys, the Panegyric on the late Lord Jeffreys, the letter to the Lord 
Chancellor, Jeffrey's Elegy. See also, Evelyn's Diary, Dec. 5, 1683, 
Oct. 31, 1685. I scarcely need advise every reader to consult Lord 
Campbell's excellent book. 

f Halifax MS. in the British Museum. 



THE LAST DAYS OF JEFFREYS. 129 

as soon as the government had been settled, the Habeas 
Corpus Act was suspended.* Whether the legal guilt of 
murder could be brought home to Jeffreys, may be doubt- 
ed. But he was morally guilty of so many murders that, 
if there had been no other way of reaching his life, a re- 
trospective Act of Attainder would have been clamorously 
demanded by the whole nation. A disposition to triumph 
over the fallen has never been one of the besetting sins of 
Englishmen : but the hatred of which Jeffreys was the 
object was without a parallel in our history, and partook 
but too largely of the savageness of his own nature. The 
people, where he was concerned, were as cruel as himself, 
and exulted in his misery as he had been accustomed to 
exult in the misery of convicts listening to the sentence 
of death, and of families clad in mourning. The rabble 
congregated before his deserted mansion in Duke Street, 
and read on the door, with shouts of laughter, the bills 
which announced the sale of his property. Even delicate 
women, who had tears for highwaymen and housebreakers, 
breathed nothing but vengeance against him. The lam- 
poons on him which were hawked about the town were 
distinguished by an atrocity rare even in those days. 
Hanging would be too mild a death for him : a grave un- 
der the gibbet too respectable a resting-place : he ought 
to be whipped to death at the cart's tail : he ought to be 
tortured like an Indian : he ought to be devoured alive. 
The street poets portioned out all his joints with cannibal 
ferocity, and computed how many pounds of steaks might 
be cut from his well-fattened carcass. Nay, the rage of 
his enemies was such that, in language seldom heard in 
England, they proclaimed their wish that he might go to 
the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth, to the worm 
that never dies, to the fire that is never quenched. They 
exhorted him to hang himself in his garters, and to cut 
his throat with his razor. They put up horrible prayers 
that he might not be able to repent, that he might die the 
same hard-hearted, wicked Jeffreys that he had lived.f 

* The Life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys ; Finch's speech in 
Gray's Debates, March 1, 1688-9. 

f See, among many other pieces, Jeffrey's Elegy, the letter to the 
Lord Chancellor exposing to him" the sentiments of the people, tho 

6* 



130 MACAULAT'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

His spirit, as mean in adversity as insolent and inhuman 
in prosperity, sank down under the load of public abhor- 
rence. His constitution, originally bad, and much im- 
paired by intemperance, was completely broken by distress 
and anxiety. He was tormented by a cruel internal dis- 
ease, which the most skilful surgeons of that age were sel- 
dom able to relieve. One solace was left to him, brandy. 
Even when he had causes to try and councils to attend, he 
had seldom gone to bed sober. Now, when he had nothing 
to occupy his mind save terrible recollections and terrible 
forebodings, he abandoned himself without reserve to his 
favourite vice. Many believed him to be bent on shorten- 
ing his life by excess. He thought it better, they said, 
to go off in a drunken fit, than to be hacked by Ketch, or 
torn limb from limb by the populace. 

Once he was roused from a state of abject despondency 
by an agreeable sensation, speedily followed by a mortify- 
ing disappointment. A parcel had been left for him at 
the Tower. It appeared to be a barrel of Colchester oys- 
ters, his favourite dainties. He was greatly moved : for 
there are moments when those who least deserve affection 
are pleased to think that they inspire it. " Thank God," 
he exclaimed, "I have still some friends left." He opened 
the barrel ; and from among a heap of shells, out tumbled 
a stout halter.* 

It does not appear that one of the flatterers or buffoons 
whom he had enriched out of the plunder of his victims, 
came to comfort him in the day of trouble. But he was 
not left in utter solitude. John Tutchin, whom he had 
sentenced to be flogged every fortnight for seven years, 
made his way into the Tower, and presented himself be- 
fore the fallen oppressor. Poor Jeffreys, humbled to the 
dust, behaved with abject civility, and called for wine. 
"I am glad, sir," he said, "to see you." "And I am 

Elegy on Dangerfield, Dangerfield's Ghost to Jeffreys, the Humble 
Petition of Widows and fatherless Children in the West, the Lord 
Chancellor's Discovery and Confession made in the time of his sick- 
ness in the Tower, Hickeringill's Ceremonymonger ; a broadside en- 
titled " rare show ! rare sight ! strange monster! The h'ke 
not in Europe ! To be seen near Tower Hill, a few doors beyond the 
Lion's den." 

* Life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys, 



THE LAST DAYS OF JEFFKEYS. 131 

glad," answered the resentful Whig, " to see Your Lord- 
ship in this place." " I served my master," said Jeffreys ; 
"I was bound in conscience to do so." "Where was your 
conscience," said Tutchin, "when you passed that sentence 
on me at Dorchester ? " " It was set down in my instruc- 
tions," answered Jeffreys, fawningly, "that I was to show 
no mercy to men like you, men of parts and courage. 
When I went back to court, I was reprimanded for my 
lenity." * Even Tutchin, acrimonious as was his nature, 
and great as were his wrongs, seems to have been a little 
mollified by the pitiable spectacle which he had at first 
contemplated with vindictive pleasure. He always denied 
the truth of the report that he was the person vvho sent 
the Colchester barrel to the Tower. 

A more benevolent man, John Sharp, the excellent 
Dean of Norwich, forced himself to visit the prisoner. It 
was a painful task : but Sharp had been treated by Jef- 
freys, in old times, as kindly as it was in the nature of 
Jeffreys to treat any body, and had once or twice been 
able, by patiently waiting till the storm of curses and in- 
vectives had spent itself, and by dexterously seizing the 
moment of good humour, to obtain for unhappy families 
some mitigation of their sufferings. The prisoner was 
surprised and pleased. " What," he said, " dare you own 
me now ? " It was in vain, however, that the amiable di- 
vine tried to give salutary pain to that seared conscience. 
Jeffreys, instead of acknowledging his guilt, exclaimed 
vehemently against the injustice of mankind. "People 
call me a murderer for doing what at the time was ap- 
plauded by some who are now high in public favour. 
They call me a drunkard because I take punch to relieve 
me in my agony." He would not admit that, as President 
of the High Commission, he had done any thing that de- 
served reproach. His colleagues, he said, were the real 
criminals ; and now they threw all the blame on him. He 
spoke with peculiar asperity of Sprat, who had undoubt- 
edly been the most humane and moderate member of the 
board. 

It soon became clear that the wicked judge was fast 

f Tutchin himself gives this narrative in the Bloody Assizes. 



132 MACAULAY'S MISCELLAIS^OUS WRITINGS. 

sinking under the weight of bodily and mental suffering. 
Doctor John Scott, prebendary of St. Paul's, a clergyman 
of great sanctity, and author of the Christian Life, a 
treatise once widely renowned, was summoned, probably 
on the recommendation of his intimate friend Sharp, to 
the bedside of the dying man It was in vain, however, 
that Scott spoke, as Sharp had already spoken, of the hid- 
eous butcheries of Dorchester f.nd Taunton. To the last 
Jeffreys continued to repeat that those who thought him 
cruel did not know what his orders were, that he deserved 
praise instead of blame, and that his clemency had drawn 
on him the extreme displeasure of his master.* 

Disease, assisted by strong drink and by misery, did 
its work fast. The patient's stomach rejected all nourish- 
ment. He dwindled in a few weeks from a portly and 
even corpulent man to a skeleton. On the eighteenth of 
April he died, in the forty-first year of his age. He had 
been Chief Justice of the King's Bench at thirty-five, and 
Lord Chancellor at thirty-seven. In the whole history of 
the English bar there is no other instance of so rapid an 
elevation, or of so terrible a fall. The emaciated corpse 
was laid, with all privacy, next to the corpse of Monmouth, 
in the chapel of the Tower.f 

* See the Life of Archbishop Sharp by his son. What passed be- 
tween Scott and Jeffreys was related by Scott to Sir Joseph Jekyl. 
See Tindal'3 History ; Echard, iii. 932. Echard's informant, who is 
not named, but who seems to have had good opportunities of knowing 
the truth, said that Jeffreys died, not, as the vulgar believed, of drink, 
but of the stone. The distinction seems to be of little importance. 
It is certain that Jeffreys was grossly intemperate ; and his malady 
was one which intemperance notoriously tends to aggravate. 

t See a Full and True Account of the Death of George Lord 
Jeffreys, licensed on the day of his death. The wretched Le Noble 
was never weary of repeating that Jeffreys was poisoned by the usur- 
per. 1 will give a short passage as a specimen of the calumnies of 
which William was the object. " II envoya," says Pasquin, " ce fin 
ragout de champignons au Chancelier Jeffreys, prisonnier dans la 
Tour, qui les trouva du meme goust, et du meme assaisonnement que 
furent les derniers dont Agrippine regala le bon-homme Claudius son 
epoux, et que Neron appella depuis la viande des Dieux." Marforio 
asks : " Le Chancelier est done mort dans la Tour ? " Pasquin answers : 
" II estoit trop fidele a son Roi legitime, et trop habile dans les loix du 
royaume, pour echapper a l'Usurpateur qu'il ne vouloit point reconnois- 
tre. Guillemot prit soin de faire publier que ce malheureux prisonnier 



RICHARD BAXTER. 133 

The fall of this man, once so great and so much 
dreaded, the horror with which he was regarded by all the 
respectable members of his own party, the manner in 
which the least respectable members of that party re- 
nounced fellowship with him in his distress, and threw on 
him the whole blame of crimes which they had encouraged 
him to commit, ought to have been a Wesson to those in- 
temperate friends of liberty who were clamouring for a 
new proscription. But it was a lesson which too many of 
them disregarded. 



KICHAED BAXTEE. 

No eminent chief of a party has ever passed through many 
years of civil and religious dissension with more innocence 
than Eichard Baxter. He belonged to the mildest and 
most temperate section of the Puritan body. He was a 
young man when the civil war broke out. He thought 
that the right was on the side of the houses, and he had 
no scruple about acting as chaplain to a regiment in the 
Parliamentary army ; but his clear and somewhat skepti- 
cal understanding , and his strong sense of justice, pre- 
served him from all excesses. He exerted himself to 
check the fanatical violence of the soldiery. He con- 
demned the proceedings of the High Court of Justice. In 
the days of the Commonwealth he had the boldness to ex- 
press, on many occasions, and once even in Cromwell's 
presence, love and reverence for the ancient institutions of 
the country. While the royal family w T as in exile, Bax- 
ter's life was chiefly passed at Kidderminster, in the as- 
siduous discharge of parochial duties. He heartily con- 
curred in the Eestoration, and was sincerely desirous to 
bring about a union between Episcopalians and Presbyte- 
rians ; for, with a liberality rare in his time, he considered 

estoit attaque d'une fievre maligne : mais, a parler franchement, il 
vivroit peut-estre encore, s'il n'avoit rien mange que de la main de 
ses anciens cuisiniers." — Le Festin de Guillemot, 1689. Dangeau 
(May 7) mentions a report that Jeffreys had poisoned himself. 



134 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

questions of ecclesiastical polity as of small account when 
compared with the great principles of Christianity, and 
had never, even when prelacy was most odious to the rul- 
ing powers, joined in the outcry against bishops. The at- 
tempt to reconcile the contending factions failed. Baxter 
cast in his lot with his proscribed friends, refused the mitre 
of Hereford, quitted the parsonage of Kidderminster, and 
gave himself up almost wholly to study. His theological 
writings, though too moderate to be pleasing to the bigots 
of any party, had an immense reputation. Zealous Church- 
men called him a Eoundhead ; and many Nonconformists 
accused him of Erastianism and Arminianism. But the 
integrity of his heart, the purity of his life, the vigour of 
his faculties, and the extent of his attainments, were ac- 
knowledged by the best and wisest men of every persua- 
sion. His political opinions, in spite of the oppression 
which he and his brethren had suffered, were moderate. 
He was partial to that small party which was hated by 
both Whigs and Tories. He could not, he said, join in 
cursing the Trimmers, when he remembered who it was 
that had blessed the peace-makers.* 



WILLIAM PEN1ST. 

The Quakers had a powerful and zealous advocate at court. 
Though, as a class, they mixed little with the world, and 
shunned politics as a pursuit dangerous to their spiritual 
interests, one of them, widely distinguished from the rest 
by station and fortune, lived in the highest circles, and 
had constant access to the royal ear. This was the cele- 
brated William Penn. His father had held great naval 
commands, had been a commissioner of the Admiralty, 
had sat in Parliament, had received the honour of knight- 
hood, and had been encouraged to expect a peerage. The 
son had been liberally educated, and had been designed 

* Baxter's Preface to Sir Matthew Hale's Judgment of the Nature 
of True Religion, 1684. 



WILLIAM PENK". 135 

for the profession of arms, but had, while still young, in- 
jured his prospects and disgusted his friends by joining 
what was then generally considered as a gang of crazy 
heretics. He had been sent sometimes to the Tower, and 
sometimes to Newgate. He had been tried at the Old 
Bailey for preaching in defiance of the law. After a time, 
however, he had been reconciled to his family, and had 
succeeded in obtaining such powerful protection, that, while 
all the jails of England were rilled with his brethren, he 
was permitted, during many years, to profess his opinions 
without molestation. Toward the close of the late reign 
he had obtained, in satisfaction of an old debt due to him 
from the crown, the grant of an immense region in North 
America. In this tract, then peopled only by Indian hunt- 
ers, he invited his persecuted friends to settle* His colony 
was still in its infancy when James mounted the throne. 

Between James and Penn there had long been a famil- 
iar acquaintance. The Quaker now became a courtier, 
and almost a favourite. He was every day summoned 
from the gallery into the closet, and sometimes had long 
audiences while peers were kept waiting in the ante-cham- 
bers. It was noised abroad that he had more real power 
to help and hurt than many nobles who filled high offices. 
He was soon surrounded by flatterers and suppliants. His 
house at Kensington was sometimes thronged, at his hour 
of rising, by more than two hundred suitors. He paid 
dear, however, for this seeming prosperity. Even his own 
sect looked coldly on him, and requited his services with 
obloquy. He was loudly accused of being a papist, nay, 
a Jesuit. Some affirmed that he had been educated at St. 
Omer's, and others that he had been ordained at Eome. 
These calumnies, indeed, could find credit only with the 
undiscerning multitude ; but with these calumnies were 
mingled accusations much better founded.* 

* Penn's visits to "Whitehall and levees at Kensington are described 
with great vivacity, though in very bad Latin, by Gerard Croese. 
" Sumebat," he says, " rex sgepe secretum, non horarium, vero hora- 
rum plurium, in quo de variis rebus cum Penno serio sermonem con- 
ferebat, et interim differebat audire praecipuorum nobilium ordinem, 
qui hoc interim spatio in proccetone, in proximo, regem conventum 
praesto erant. " Of the crowd of suitors at Penn's house, Croese says, 
" Vidi quandoque de hoc genere hominum non minus bis centum/' 



136 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task 
which requires some courage, for he is rather a mythical 
than an historical person. Kival nations and hostile sects 
have agreed in canonizing him. England is proud of his 
name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic re- 
gards him with a reverence similar to that which the 
Athenians felt for Theseus, and the Komans for Quirinus. 
The respectable society of which he was a member honours 
him as an apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he 
is generally regarded as a bright pattern of Christian vir- 
tue. Meanwhile, admirers of a very different sort have 
sounded his praises. The French philosophers of the 
eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded as his 
superstitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for 
priests, and» of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially 
extended to all races and to all creeds. His name has 
thus become, throughout all civilized countries, a synonym 
for probity and philanthropy. 

Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited. Penn 
was without doubt a man of eminent virtues. He had a 
strong sense of religious duty and a fervent desire to promote 
the happiness of mankind. On one or two points of high 
importance he had notions more correct than were, in his 
day, common even among men of enlarged minds ; and, 
as the proprietor and legislator of a province which, being 
almost uninhabited when it came into his possession, af- 
forded a clear field for moral experiments, he had the rare 
good fortune of being able to carry his theories into prac- 
tice without any compromise, and yet without any shock 
to existing institutions. Pie will always be mentioned 
with honour as a founder of a colony, who did not, in his 
dealings with a savage people, abuse the strength derived 
from civilization, and as a lawgiver who, in an age of per- 
secution, made religious liberty the corner-stone of a poli- 
ty. But his writings and his life furnish abundant proofs 
that he was not a man of strong sense. He had no skill 
in reading the characters of others. His confidence in 

His evidence as to the feeling with which Penn was regarded by his 
brethren is clear and full. " Etiam Quakeri Pennum non amplius, ut 
ante, ita amabant ac magnifaciabant, quidam aversabantur ac fugie- 
bant." — Historia QuaJceriana, lib. ii., 1695. 



WILLIAM PENN. 137 

persons less virtuous than himself, led him into great er- 
rors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great prin- 
ciple sometimes impelled him to violate other great prin- 
ciples which he ought to have held sacred. Nor was his 
integrity altogether proof against the temptations to which 
it was exposed in that splendid and polite, but deeply cor- 
rupted society with which he now mingled. The whole 
court was in a ferment with intrigues of gallantry and 
intrigues of ambition. The traffic in honours, places, and 
pardons was incessant. It was natural that a man who 
was daily seen at the palace, and who was known to have 
free access to majesty, should be frequently importuned to 
use his influence for purposes which a rigid morality must 
condemn. The integrity of Penn had stood firm against 
obloquy and persecution ; but now, attacked by royal 
smiles, by female blandishments, by the insinuating elo- 
quence and delicate flattery of veteran diplomatists and 
courtiers, his resolution began to give way. Titles and 
phrases against which he had often borne his testimony, 
dropped occasionally from his lips and his pen. It would 
be well if he had been guilty of nothing worse than such 
compliances with the fashions of the world. Unhappily, 
it cannot be concealed that he bore a chief part in some 
transactions condemned, not merely by the rigid code of 
the society to which he belonged, but by the general sense 
of all honest men. He afterward solemnly protested that 
his hands were pure from illicit gain, and that he had 
never received any gratuity from those whom he had 
obliged, though he might easily, while his influence at 
court lasted, have made a hundred and twenty thousand 
pounds* To this assertion full credit is due. But bribes 
may be offered to vanity as well as to cupidity ; and it is 
impossible to deny that Penn was cajoled into bearing a 
part in some unjustifiable transactions of which others en- 
joyed the profits. 

The first use which he made of his credit was highly 
commendable. He strongly represented the sufferings of 
the Quakers to the new king, who saw with pleasure that 

* " Twenty thousand into my pocket, and a hundred thousand 
into my province." — PenrCs Letter to Popple. 



138 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

it was possible to grant indulgence to these quiet sectaries 
and to the Eoman Catholics without showing similar favour 
to other classes which were then under persecution. A 
list was framed of persons against whom proceedings had 
been instituted for not taking the oaths, or for not going 
to church, and of whose loyalty certificates had been pro- 
duced to the government. These persons were discharged, 
and orders were given that no similar proceeding should 
be instituted till the royal pleasure should be further sig- 
nified. In this way about fifteen hundred Quakers, and a 
still greater number of Koman Catholics, regained their 

liberty.* 

******** 

The conduct of Penn was scarcely less scandalous. 
He was a zealous and busy Jacobite ; and his new way of 
life was even more unfavourable than his late way of life 
had been to moral purity. It was hardly possible to be at 
once a consistent Quaker and a courtier ; but it was utter- 
ly impossible to be at once a consistent Quaker and a con- 
spirator. It is melancholy to relate that Penn, while pro- 
fessing to consider even defensive war as sinful, did every 
thing in his power to bring a foreign army into the heart 
of his own country. He wrote to inform James that the 
adherents of the Prince of Orange dreaded nothing so 
much as an appeal to the sword, and that, if England 
were now invaded from France or from Ireland, the num- 
ber of royalists would appear to be greater than ever. 
Avaux thought this letter so important,- that he sent a 
translation of it to Lewis. f A good effect, the shrewd 

* These orders, signed by Sunderland, will be found in Sewel's 
History. They bear date April 18, 1685. They are written in a 
style singularly obscure and intricate ; but I think that I have ex- 
hibited the meaning correctly. I have not been able to find any 
proof that any person, not a Roman Catholic or a Quaker, regained 
his freedom under these orders. See Neal's History of the Puritans, 
vol, ii. chap. ii. Gerard Croese, lib. ii. Croese estimates the number 
of Quakers liberated at 1,460. 

•f Avaux wrote thus to Lewis on the 5th of June, 1689 : " II nous 
est venu des nouvelles assez considerables d'Angleterre et d'Escosse. 
Je me donne 1'honneur d'en envoy er des memoires a vostre Majeste, 
tels que je les ay receus du Roy de la Grande Bretagne. Le com- 
mencement des nouvelles dattees d'Angleterre est la copie d'une lettre 



JOHN LOCKE. 139 

ambassador wrote, had been produced by this and similar 
communications, on the mind of King James. His majes- 
ty was at last convinced that he could recover his domin- 
ions only sword in hand. It is a curious fact that it 
should have been reserved for the great preacher of peace 
to produce this conviction in the mind of the old tyrant* 
Penn's proceedings had not escaped the observation of the 
government. "Warrants had been out against him ; and 
he had been taken into custody ; but the evidence against 
him had not been such as would support a charge of high 
treason : he had, as, with all his faults, he deserved to 
have, many friends in every party ; he therefore soon re- 
gained his liberty, and returned to his plots. f 



JOHN LOCKE. 



John Locke hated tyranny and persecution as a philoso- 
pher ; but his intellect and his temper preserved him from 
the violence of a partisan. He had lived on confidential 
terms with Shaftesbury, and had thus incurred the dis- 
pleasure of the court. Locke's prudence had, however, 
been such that it would have been to little purpose to bring 

de M. Pen, que j'ay veue em original." The Memoire des Nouvelles 
d'Angleterre et d'Escosse, which was sent with this dispatch, "begins 
with the following sentences, which must have been part of Penn's 
letter : " Le Prince d'Orange commence d'estre fort degoutte de l'hu- 
meur des Anglois ; et la face des choses change bien viste, selon la 
nature des insulaires ; et sa sante est fort mauvaise. II y a un nuao-e 
qui commence a se former au nord des deux royaumes ou le Roy a 
beaucoup d'amis, ce qui donne beaucoup dinquietude aux principaux 
amis du Prince d'Orange, qui, estant riches, commencent a estre per- 
suadez que ce sera l'espee qui decidera de leur sort, ce qu'ils ont tant 
tache d'eviter. lis apprehendent une invasion d'Irlande et de France; 
et en ce cas le Roy aura plus d'amis que jamais." 

* " Le bon effet, Sire, que ces lettres d'Escosse et d'Angleterre ont 
produit, est qu'elles ont enfin persuade le Roy-d'Angleterre qu'il ne 
recouvrera ses estats que les armes a la main ; et ce n'est pas peu de 
Ten avoir convaincu." 

f Van Citters to the States General, March 1 (11), 1689. Van 
Citters calls Penn, " den bekenden Archquaker." 



140 macatjxa.y's miscellaneous writings. 

him even before the corrupt and partial tribunals of that 
age. In one point, however, he was vulnerable. He was 
a student of Christ Church in the University of Oxford. 
It was determined to drive from that celebrated college 
the greatest man of whom it could ever boast ; but this was 
not easy. Locke had, at Oxford, abstained from express- 
ing any opinion on the politics of the day. Spies had 
been set about him. Doctors of divinity and masters of 
arts had not been ashamed to perform the vilest of all of- 
fices, that of watching the lips of a companion in order to 
report his words to his ruin. The conversation in the hall 
had been purposely turned to irritating topics, to the Ex- 
clusion Bill, and to the character of the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, but in vain. Locke never broke out, never dissem- 
bled, but maintained such steady silence and composure 
as forced the tools of power to own with vexation that 
never man was so complete a master of his tongue and of 
his passions. When it was found that treachery could do 
nothing, arbitrary power was used. After vainly trying 
to inveigle Locke into a fault, the government resolved to 
punish him without one. Orders came from Whitehall 
that he should be ejected, and those orders the dean and 
canons made haste to obey. 

Locke was travelling on the Continent for his health 
when he learned that he had been deprived of his home 
and of his bread without a trial or even a notice. The 
injustice with which he had been treated would have ex- 
cused him if he had resorted to violent methods of redress. 
But he was not to be blinded by personal resentment; 
he augured no good from the schemes of those who had 
assembled at Amsterdam ; and he quietly repaired to 
Utrecht, where, while his partners in misfortune were 
planning their own destruction, he employed himself in 
writing his celebrated letter on Toleration.* 

* Lc Gere's Life of Locke ; Lord King's Life of Locke ; Lord 
Grenville's Oxford and Locke. Locke must not be confounded with 
the Anabaptist Nicholas Look, whose name is spelled Locke in Grey's 
Confession, and who is mentioned in the Landsdowne MS., 1152, and 
in the Buccleuch narrative appended to Mr. loose's dissertation. I 
should hardly think it necessary to make this remark, but that the sim- 
ilarity of the two names appears to have misled a man so well ac- 



ARCHIBALD EARL OF ARGYLE. 141 



AECHIBALD EAKL OF AEGYLE. 

Argyle hoped to find a secure asylum under the roof of 
one of his old servants who lived near Kilpatrick ; hut this 
hope was disappointed, and he was forced to cross the 
Clyde. He assumed the dress of a peasant, and pretended 
to be the guide of Major Fuliarton, whose courageous fidel- 
ity was proof to all danger. The friends journeyed to- 
gether through Eenfrewshire, as far as Inchinnan. At 
that place the Black Cart and the White Cart, two streams 
which now flow through prosperous towns, and turn the 
wheels of many factories, but which then held their quiet 
course through moors and sheep-walks, mingle before they 
join the Clyde. The only ford by which the travellers 
could cross was guarded by a party of militia. Some 
questions were asked. Fuliarton tried to draw suspicion 
on himself, in order that his companion might escape un- 
noticed ; but the minds of the questioners misgave them 
that the guide was not the rude clown that he seemed. 
They laid hands on him. He broke loose and sprang into 
the water,. but was instantly chased. He stood at bay for 
a short time against five assailants ; but he had no arms 
except his pocket pistols, and they were so wet, in conse- 
quence of his plunge, that they would not go off. He 
was struck to the ground with a broadsword, and secured. 
He owned himself to be the Earl of Argyle, probably 
in the hope that his great name would excite the awe and 
pity of those who had seized him. And, indeed, they 
were much moved ; for they were plain Scotchmen of hum- 
ble rank, and, though in arms for the crown, probably 
cherished a preference for the Calvinistic church govern- 
ment and worship, and had been accustomed to reverence 
their captive as the head of an illustrious house and as a 
champion of the Protestant religion. But, though they 
were evidently touched, and though some of them even 
wept, they were not disposed to relinquish a large reward 
and to incur the vengeance of an implacable government. 

qnainted with the history of those times as Speaker Onslow. See his 
note on Burnet, i. G29. 



142 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

They therefore conveyed their prisoner to Eenfrew. The 
man who bore the chief part in the arrest was named 
Eiddell. On this account the whole race of Eiddells was, 
during more than a century, held in abhorrence by the 
great tribe of Campbell. Within living memory, when a 
Eiddell visited a fair in Argyleshire, he found it necessary 
to assume a false name. 

And now commenced the brightest part of Argyle's 
career. His enterprise had hitherto brought on him 
nothing but reproach and derision. His great error was 
that he did not resolutely refuse to accept the name with- 
out the power of a general. Had he remained quietly at 
his retreat in Friesland, he would in a few years have 
been recalled with honour to his country, and would have 
been conspicuous among the ornaments and the props of 
constitutional monarchy. Had he conducted his expedi- 
tion according to his own views, and carried with him no 
followers but such as were prepared implicitly to obey all 
his orders, he might possibly have effected something 
great ; for what he wanted as a captain seems to have 
been, not courage, nor activity, nor skill, but simply au- 
thority. He should have known that of all wants this is 
the most fatal. Armies have triumphed under leaders who 
possessed no very eminent qualifications. But what army 
commanded by a debating club ever escaped discomfiture 
and disgrace % 

The great calamity which had fallen on Argyle had 
this advantage, that it enabled him to show, by proofs not 
to be mistaken, what manner of man he was. From the 
day when he quitted Friesland to the day when his follow- 
ers separated at Kilpatrick, he had never been a free 
agent. He had borne the responsibility of a long series 
of measures which his judgment disapproved. Now at 
length he stood alone. " Captivity had restored to him the 
noblest kind of liberty, the liberty of governing himself 
in all his words and actions according to his own sense of 
the right and of the becoming. All at once he became as 
one inspired with new wisdom and virtue. His intellect 
seemed to be strengthened and concentrated, his moral 
character to be at once elevated and softened. The inso- 
lence of the conquerors spared nothing that could try the 



ARCHIBALD EARL OF ARGYLE. 143 

temper of a man proud of ancient nobility and of patri- 
archal dominion. The prisoner was dragged through 
Edinburgh in triumph. He walked on foot, bareheaded, 
up the whole length of that stately street which, overshad- 
owed by dark and gigantic piles of stone, leads from 
Holyrood House to the castle. Before him marched the 
hangman, bearing the ghastly instrument which was to be 
p used at the quartering block. The victorious party had 
not forgotten that, thirty-five years before this time, the 
father of Argyle had been at the head of the faction which 
put Montrose to death. Before that event the houses of 
Graham and Campbell had borne no love to each other ; 
and they had ever since been at deadly feud. Care was 
taken that the prisoner should pass through the same gate 
and the same streets through which Montrose had been 
led to the same doom. The troops who attended the pro- 
cession were put under the command of Claverhouse, the 
fiercest and sternest of the race of Graham. When the 
earl reached the castle his legs were put in irons, and he 
was informed that he had but a few days to live. It had 
been determined not to bring him to trial for his recent 
offence, but to put him to death under the sentence pro- 
nounced against him several years before ; a sentence so 
flagitiously unjust that the most servile and obdurate law- 
yers of that bad age could not speak of it without shame. 
But neither the ignominious procession up the High 
Street, nor the near view of death, had power to disturb 
the gentle and majestic patience of Argyle. His fortitude 
was tried by a still more severe test. A paper of inter- 
rogatories was laid before him by order of the Privy Coun- 
cil. He replied to those questions to which he could reply 
without danger to any of his friends, and refused to say 
more. He was told that unless he returned full answers 
he should be put to the torture. James, who was doubt- 
less sorry that he could not feast his own eyes with the 
sight of Argyle in the boots, sent down to Edinburgh pos- 
itive orders that nothing should be omitted which could 
wring out of the traitor information against all who had 
been concerned in the treason. But menaces were vain. 
With torments and death in immediate prospect, Mac Cal- 
lum More thought far less of himself than of his poor 



144 hacaulay's miscellaneous wettings. 

clansmen. " I was busy this day," lie wrote from his cell, 
" treating for them, and in some hopes ; but this evening 
orders came that I must die upon Monday or Tuesday ; 
and I am to be put to the torture if I answer not all 
questions upon oath. Yet I hope God shall support me." 

The torture was not inflicted. Perhaps the magna- 
nimity of the victim had moved the conquerors to un- 
wonted compassion. He himself remarked that at first 
they had been very harsh to him, but they soon began to 
treat him with respect and kindness. God, he said, had 
melted their hearts. It is certain that he did not, to save 
himself from the utmost cruelty of his enemies, betray 
any of his friends. On the last morning of his life he 
wrote these words : "I have named none to their disad- 
vantage. I thank God he hath supported me wonderfully." 

He composed his own epitaph ; a short poem, full of 
meaning and spirit, simple and forcible in style, and not 
contemptible in versification. In this little piece he com- 
plained that, though his enemies had repeatedly decreed 
his death, his friends had been still more cruel. A com- 
ment on these expressions is to be found in a letter which 
he addressed to a lady residing in Holland. She had fur- 
nished him with a large sum of money for his expedition, 
and he thought her entitled to a full explanation of the 
causes which had led to his failure. He acquitted his co- 
adjutors of treachery, but described their folly, their igno- 
rance, and their factious perverseness, in terms which their 
own testimony has since proved to have been richly de- 
served. He afterward doubted whether he had not used 
language too severe to become a dying Christian, and, in 
a separate paper, begged his friend to suppress what he 
had said of these men. " Only this I must acknowledge," 
he mildly added ; " they were not governable." 

Most of his few remaining hours were passed in devo- 
tion, and in affectionate intercourse with some members 
of his family. He professed no repentance on account of 
his last enterprise, but bewailed, with great emotion, his 
former compliance in spiritual things with the pleasure of 
the government. He had, he said, been justly punished. 
One who had so long been guilty of cowardice and dis- 
simulation, was not worthy to be the instrument of salva- 



ABCHIBALD EARL OF ARGYLE. 145 

tion to the State and Church ; yet the cause, he frequent- 
ly repeated, was the cause of God, and would assuredly 
triumph. " I do not," he said, " take on myself to be a 
prophet ; but I have a strong impression on my spirit that 
deliverance will come very suddenly." It is not strange 
that some zealous Presbyterians should have laid up his 
saying in their hearts, and should, at a later period, have 
attributed it to divine inspiration. 

So effectually had religious faith and hope, co-operating 
with natural courage and equanimity, composed his spirits, 
that, on the very day on which he was to die, he dined 
with appetite, conversed with gayety at table, and, after 
his last meal, lay down, as he was wont, to take a short 
slumber, in order that his body and mind might be in full 
vigour when he should mount the scaffold. At this time 
one of the lords of the council, who had probably been 
bred a Presbyterian, and had been seduced by interest to 
join in oppressing the Church of which he had once been 
a member, came to the castle with a message from his 
brethren, and demanded admittance to the earl. It was 
answered that the earl was asleep. The privy councillor 
thought that this was a subterfuge, and insisted on enter- 
ing. The door of the cell was softly opened ; and there 
lay Argyle on the bed, sleeping, in his irons, the placid 
sleep of infancy. The conscience of the renegade smote 
him. He turned away sick at heart, ran out of the castle, 
and took refuge in the dwelling of a lady of his family 
who lived hard by. There he flung himself on a couch, 
and gave himself up to an agony of remorse and shame. 
His kinswoman, alarmed by his looks and groans, thought 
that he had been taken sick with sudden illness, and 
begged him to drink a cup of sack. " No, no," he said, 
" that will do me no good." She prayed him to tell her 
what had disturbed him. "I have been," he said, "in 
Argyle's prison. I have seen him, within an hour of eter- 
nitv, sleeping as sweetly as ever man did. But as for 
me—" 

And now the earl had risen from his bed, and had pre- 
pared himself for what was yet to be endured. He was 
first brought down the High Street to the Council House, 
where he was to remain during the short interval which 
1 



146 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS "WRITINGS. 

was still to elapse before the execution. During that in- 
terval he asked for pen and ink, and wrote to his wife. 
" Dear heart, God is unchangeable. He hath always been 
good and gracious to me ; and no place alters it. Forgive 
me all my faults ; and now comfort thyself in him, in whom 
only true comfort is to be found. The Lord be with thee, 
bless and comfort thee, my dearest. Adieu." 

It was now time to leave the Council House. The 
divines who attended the prisoner were not of his own 
persuasion ; but he listened to them with civility, and ex- 
horted them to caution their flocks against those doctrines 
which all Protestant churches unite in condemning. He 
mounted the scaffold, w T here the rude old guillotine of 
Scotland, called the Maiden, awaited him, and addressed 
the people in a speech, tinctured with the peculiar phrase- 
ology of his sect, but breathing the spirit of serene piety. 
His enemies, he said, he forgave as he hoped to be for- 
given. Only a single acrimonious expression escaped him. 
One of the Episcopal clergymen who attended him went 
to the edge of the scaffold, and called out in a loud voice, 
"My lord dies a Protestant." "Yes," said the earl, 
stepping forward, "and not only a Protestant, but with a 
heart-hatred of popery, of prelacy, and of all superstition." 
He then embraced his friends, put into their hands some 
tokens of remembrance for his wife and children, kneeled 
down, laid his head on the block, prayed for a little space, 
and gave the signal to the executioner. His head was 
fixed on the top of the Tolbooth, where the head of Mon- 
trose had formerly decayed.* 

* Tho authors from whom I have taken the history of Argyle's 
expedition are Sir Patrick Hume, who was an eye-witness of what he 
related, and Wodrow, who had access to materials of the greatest 
value, among which were the earl's own papers. Wherever there is a 
question of veracity between Argyle and Hume, I have no doubt that 
Argyle's narrative ought to be followed. 

See, also, Burnet, i. 631, and the Life of Bresson, published by 
Dr. Mac Crie. 

The account of the Scotch rebellion in Clarke's Life of James tho 
Second is a ridiculous romance, composed by a Jacobite who did not 
even take the trouble to look at a map of the seat of war. 



RICHARD TALBOT, EARL OF TYRCONNEL. 147 



EICHAED TALBOT, EAEL OF TYRCONNEL. 

Soon after the prorogation, this reckless faction was 
strengthened by an important reinforcement. Richard 
Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, the fiercest and most uncom- 
promising of all those who hated the liberties and religion 
of England, arrived at court from Dublin. 

Talbot was descended from an old Norman family which 
had been long settled in Leinster, which had there sunk into 
degeneracy, which had adopted the manners of the Celts, 
which had, like the Celts, adhered tc the old religion, and 
which had taken part with the Celts in the rebellion of 1641 . 
In his youth he had been one of the most noted sharpers 
and bullies of London. He had been introduced to Charles 
and James when they were exiles in Flanders, as a man 
fit and ready for the infamous service of assassinating the 
Protector. Soon after the Restoration, Talbot attempted 
to obtain the favour of the royal family by a service more 
infamous still. A plea was wanted which might justify 
the Duke of York in breaking that promise of marriage 
by which he had obtained from Anne Hyde the last proof 
of female affection. Such a plea Talbot, in concert with 
some of his dissolute companions, undertook to .furnish. 
He affirmed that he had triumphed over the young lady's 
virtue, made up a long romance about the interviews with 
which she had indulged him, and related how, in one of 
his secret visits to her, he had unluckily overturned the 
chancellor's inkstand upon a pile of papers, and how clev- 
erly she had averted a discovery by laying the blame of 
the accident on her monkey. These stories, which, if they 
had been true, would never have passed the lips of any 
but the basest of mankind, were pure inventions. Talbot 
was soon forced to own that they were so ; and he owned 
it without a blush. The injured lady became Duchess of 
York. Had her husband been a man really upright and 
honourable, he would have driven from his presence with 
indignation and contempt the wretches who had slandered 
her. But one of the peculiarities of James's character 
was, that no act, however wicked and shameful, which had 



148 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

been prompted by a desire to gain his favour, ever seemed 
to him deserving of disapprobation. Talbot continued to 
frequent the court, appeared daily with brazen front before 
the princess whose ruin he had plotted, and was installed 
into the lucrative post of chief pander to her husband. 
In no long time Whitehall was thrown into confusion by 
the news that Dick Talbot, as he was commonly called, 
had laid a plan to murder the Duke of Ormond. The 
bravo was sent to the Tower ; but in a few days he was 
again swaggering about the galleries, and carrying billets 
backward and forward between his patron and the ugliest 
maids of honour. It was in vain that old and discreet 
councillors implored the royal brothers not to countenance 
this bad man, who had nothing to recommend him except 
his fine person and his taste in dress. Talbot was not 
only welcome at the palace when the bottle or the dice-box 
was going round, but was heard with attention on matters 
of business. He affected the character of an Irish patriot, 
and pleaded with great audacity, and sometimes with suc- 
cess, the cause of his countrymen whose estates had been 
confiscated. He took care, however, to be well paid for 
his services, and succeeded in acquiring, partly by the sale 
of his influence, partly by gambling, and partly by pimp- 
ing, an estate of three thousand pounds a year ; for, under 
an outward show of levity, profusion, improvidence, and 
eccentric impudence, he was, in truth, one of the most 
mercenary and crafty of mankind. He was now no longer 
young ; but advancing age had made no essential change 
in his character and manners. He still, whenever he 
opened his mouth, ranted, cursed, and swore with such 
frantic violence that superficial observers set him down for 
the wildest of libertines. The multitude was unable to 
conceive that a man who, even when sober, was more fu- 
rious and boastful than others when they were drunk, and 
who seemed utterly incapable of disguising any emotion 
or keeping any secret, could really be a cold-hearted, far- 
sighted, scheming sycophant : yet such a man was Talbot. 
In truth, his hypocrisy was of a far higher and rarer sort 
than the hypocrisy which had flourished in Barebones's 
Parliament ; for the consummate hypocrite is not he who 
conceals vice behind the semblance of virtue, but he who 



CATHAKINE SEDLEY. 149 

makes the vice which he has no objection to show a stalk- 
ing-horse to cover darker and more profitable vice which it 
is for his interest to hide. 



CATHAKINE SEDLET. 

This woman was the daughter of Sir Charles Sedley, one 
of the most brilliant and profligate wits of the Kestora- 
tion. The licentiousness of his writings is not redeemed 
by much grace or vivacity, but the charms of his conver- 
sation were acknowledged even by sober men who had no 
esteem for his character. To sit near him at the theatre, 
and to hear his criticisms on a new play, was regarded as 
a privilege.* Dryden had done him the honour to make 
him a principal interlocutor in the dialogue on dramatic 
poesy. The morals of Sedley were such as, even in that 
age, gave great scandal. He on one occasion, after a wild 
revel, exhibited himself without a shred of clothing in the 
balcony of a tavern near Covent Garden, and harangued 
the people who were passing in language so indecent and 
profane, that he was driven in by a shower of brickbats, 
was prosecuted for a misdemeanor, was sentenced to a 
heavy fine, and was reprimanded by the Court of King's 
Bench in the most cutting terms, f His daughter had in- 
herited his abilities and his impudence. Personal charms 
she had none, with the exception of two brilliant eyes, the 
lustre of which, to men of delicate taste, seemed fierce and 
unfeminine. Her form was lean, her countenance hag- 
gard. Charles, though he liked her conversation, laughed 
at her ugliness, and said that the priests must have recom- 
mended her to his brother by way of penance. She well 
knew that she was not handsome, and jested freely on her 
own ugliness ; yet, with strange inconsistency, she loved 
to adorn herself magnificently, and drew on herself much 
keen ridicule by appearing in the theatre and the ring, 

* Pepys, Oct. 4, 1664. f Pepys, July 1, 1663. 



150 macatjlay's miscellaneous writings. 

plastered, painted, clad in Brussels lace, glittering with 
diamonds, and affecting all the graces of eighteen.* 

The nature of her influence over James is not easily 
to be explained. He was no longer young. He was a 
religious man ; at least he was willing to make for his re- 
ligion exertions, and sacrifices from which the great major- 
ity of those who are called religious men would shrink. 
It seems strange that any attractions should have drawn 
him into a course of life which he mr\st have regarded as 
highly criminal, and in this case none could understand 
where the attraction lay. Catharine herself was aston- 
ished by the violence of his passion. " It cannot be my 
beauty," she said, " for he must see that I have none ; and 
it cannot be my wit, for he has not enough to know that I 
have any." 

At the moment of the king's accession, a sense of the 
new responsibility which lay on him made his mind for a 
time peculiarly open to religious impressions. He formed 
and announced many good resolutions, spoke in public 
with great severity of the impious and licentious manners 
of the age, and in private assured his queen and his con- 
fessor that he would see Catharine Sedley no more. He 
wrote to his mistress entreating her to quit the apartments 
which she occupied at Whitehall, and to go to a house in 
St. James's Square which had been splendidly furnished 
for her at his expense. He at the same time promised to 
allow her a large pension from his privy purse. Catharine, 
clever, strong-minded, intrepid, and conscious of her pow- 
er, refused to stir. In a few months it began to be whis- 
pered that the services of Chiffinch were again employed, 
and that the mistress frequently passed and repassed 
through that private door through which Father Huddle- 
ston had borne the host to the bedside of the late king. 
The king's Protestant ministers had, it seems, conceived a 
hope that their master's infatuation for this woman might 
cure him of the more pernicious infatuation which impelled 
him to attack their religion. She had all the talents 
which qualified her to play on his feelings, to make game 
of his scruples, to set before him in a strong light the diffi- 

* See Dorset's satirical lines on her. 



CATHARINE SEDLEY. 151 

culties and dangers into which he was running headlong. 
Rochester, the champion of the Church, exerted himself to 
strengthen her influence. Ormond, who is popularly re- 
garded as the personification of all that is pure and high- 
minded in the English Cavalier, encouraged the design. 
Even Lady Rochester was not ashamed to co-operate, and 
that in the very worst way. Her office was to direct the 
jealousy of the injured wife toward a young lady who was 
perfectly innocent. The whole court took notice of the 
coldness and rudeness with which the queen treated the 
poor girl on whom suspicion had been thrown ; but the 
cause of her majesty's ill-humour was a mystery. For a 
time the intrigue went on prosperously and secretly. 
Catharine often told the king plainly what the Protestant 
lords of the council only dared to hie t in the most delicate 
phrases. His crown, she said, was at stake ; the old 
dotard Arundell and the blustering Tyrconnel would lead 
him to his ruin. It is possible that her caresses might 
have done what the united exhortations of the Lords and 
the Commons, of the house of Austria, and of the Holy 
See, had failed to do, but for a strange mishap which 
changed the whole face of affairs. James, in a fit of fond- 
ness, determined to make his mistress Countess of Dor- 
chester in her own right. Catharine saw all the peril of 
such a step, and declined the invidious honour. Her lover 
was obstinate, and himself forced the patent into her hands. 
She at last accepted it on one condition, which shows her 
confidence in her own power and in his weakness. She 
made him give her a solemn promise, not that he would 
never quit her, but that, if he did so, he would himself 
announce his resolution to her, and grant her one parting 
interview. 

As soon as the news of her elevation got abroad, the 
whole palace was in an uproar. The warm blood of Italy 
boiled in the veins of the queen. Proud of her youth and 
of her charms, of her high rank and of her stainless chas- 
tity, she could not, without agonies -of grief and rage, see 
herself deserted and insulted for such a rival. Rochester, 
perhaps, remembering how patiently, after a short strug- 
gle, Catharine of Braganza had consented to treat the 
mistresses of Charles with politeness, had expected that, 



152 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

after a little complaining and pouting, Mary of Modena 
would be equally submissive. It was not so. She did not 
even attempt to conceal from the eyes of the world the 
violence of her emotions. Day after day, the courtiers 
who came to see her dine observed that the dishes were 
removed untastecl from the table. She suffered the tears 
to stream down her cheeks unconcealed in the presence of 
the whole circle of courtiers and envoys. To the king she 
spoke with wild vehemence : " Let me go ! " she cried. 
" You have made your woman a countess : make her a 
queen ! Put my crown on her head ! Only let me hide 
myself in some convent, where I may never see her more." 
Then, more soberly, she asked him how he reconciled his 
conduct to his religious professions, "You are ready," 
she said, " to put your kingdom to hazard for the sake of 
your soul, and yet you are throwing away your soul for the 
sake of that creature." Father Petre, on bended knees, 
seconded these remonstrances. It was his duty to do so ; 
and his duty was not the less strenuously performed be- 
cause it coincided with his interest. The king went on for 
a time sinning and repenting. In his hours of remorse 
his penances were severe. Mary treasured up to the end 
of her life, and at her death bequeathed to the convent of 
Chaillot, the scourge with which he had vigorously avenged 
her wrongs upon his own shoulders. Nothing but Catha- 
rine's absence could put an end to this struggle between 
an ignoble love and an ignoble superstition. James wrote, 
imploring and commanding her to depart. He owned 
that he had promised to bid her farewell in person. " But 
I know too well," he added, " the power which you have 
over me. I have not strength of mind enough to keep my 
resolution if I see you." He offered her a yacht to convey 
her with all dignity to Flanders, and threatened that if 
she did not go quietly she should be sent away by force. 
She at one time worked on his feeelings by pretending to 
be ill. Then she assumed the airs of a martyr, and impu- 
dently proclaimed herself a sufferer for the Protestant re- 
ligion. Then again she adopted the style of John Hamp- 
den. She defied the king to remove her. She would try 
the right with him. While the Great Charter and the 
Habeas Corpus Act were the law of the land, she would 



CATHARINE SEDLEY. 153 

live where she pleased. "And Flanders," she cried; 
" never ! I have learned one thing from my friend the 
Duchess of Mazarin, and that is, never to trust myself in 
a country where there are convents." At length she se- 
lected Ireland as the place of her exile, probably because 
the brother of her patron Eochester was viceroy there. 
After many delays she departed, leaving the victory to the 
queen.* 

The history of this extraordinary intrigue would be 
imperfect if it were not added that there is still extant a 
religious meditation, written by the treasurer, with his 
own hand, on the very same day on which the intelligence 
of his attempt to govern his master by means of a concu- 
bine was despatched by Bonrepaux to Versailles. No 
composition of Ken or Leighton breathes a spirit of more 
fervent and exalted piety than this effusion. Hypocrisy 
cannot be suspected, for the paper was evidently meant 
only for the writer's own eye, and was not published till 
he had been more than a century in his grave. f So much 
is history stranger than fiction, and so true is it that Na- 
ture has caprices which Art dares not imitate. A dramatist 
would scarcely venture to bring on the stage a grave 
prince, in the decline of life, ready to sacrifice his crown 

* The chief materials for the history of this intrigue are the de- 
spatches of Barillon and Bonrepaux at the beginning of the year 1 686. 
See Barillon, Jan. 25, Feb. 4 — Jan, 28 — Feb. 7, Feb. 1—11, Feb. 8— 
18, Feb. 19 — 29, and Bonrepaux under the first four dates ; Evelyn's 
Diary, Jan. 19; Reresby's Memoirs; Burnet, i. 682 ; Sheridan MS. ; 
Chaillot MS. ; Adda's Despatches, Jan. 23 — Feb. 1, and Jan. 29 — Feb. 
8, 1686. Adda writes like a pious, but weak and ignorant man. He 
appears to have known nothing of James's past life. 

f The meditation bears date Jan. 25 — Feb. 4, 1685 — 6. Bonrepaux, 
in his despatch of the same day, says, " L'intrigue avoit ete conduite 
par Milord Eochester et sa femme. . . . Leur projet etoit de 
faire gouverner le Roy d'Angleterre par la nouvelle comtesse^ lis 
s'etoient assures d'elle." "While Bonrepaux was writing thus, Roches- 
ter was writing as follows : " God, teach me so to number my days 
that I may apply my heart unto wisdom. Teach me to number the 
days that I have spent in vanity and idleness, and teach me to num- 
ber those which I have spent in sin and wickedness. God, teach 
me to number the days of my affliction too, and to give thanks for all 
that is come to me from thy hand. Teach me likewise to number 
the days of this world's greatness, of which I have so great a share ; 
and teach me to look upon them as vanity and vexation of spirit" 

7* 



154 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

in order to serve the interests of his religion, indefatigable 
in making proselytes, and yet deserting and insulting a 
wife who had youth and beauty for the sake of a profli- 
gate paramour who had neither. Still less, if possible, 
would a dramatist venture to introduce a statesman stoop- 
ing to the wicked and shameful part of a procurer, and 
calling in his wife to aid him in that dishonourable office, 
yet, in his moments of leisure, retiring to his closet, and 
there secretly pouring out his soul to his God in penitent 
tears and devout ejaculations. 



WILLIAM III., MAET II. AND BISHOP BUENET. 

The place which William Henry, Prince of Orange Nas- 
sau, occupies in the history of England and of mankind, 
is so great that it may be desirable to portray with some 
minuteness the strong lineaments of his character* 

He was now in his thirty-seventh year. But both in 
body and in mind he was older than other men of the 
same age. Indeed, it might be said that he had never 
been young. His external appearance is almost as well 
known to us as to his own captains and counsellors. 
Sculptors, painters, and medallists exerted their utmost 
skill in the work of transmitting his features to posterity ; 
and his features were such as no artist could fail to seize, 
and such as, once seen, could never be forgotten. His 
name at once calls up before us a slender and feeble frame, 
a lofty and ample forehead, a nose curved like the beak of 
an eagle, an eye rivalling that of an eagle in brightness 
and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat sullen brow, a 

* The chief materials from which I have taken my description of 
the Prince of Orange will be found in Burnet's History, in Temple's 
and Gourville's Memoirs, in the Negotiations of the Counts of Es- 
trades and Avaux, in Sir George Downing's Letters to Lord Chancel- 
lor Clarendon, in Wagenaar's voluminous History, in Van Kamper's 
Karakterkunde der Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis, and, above all, in 
William's own confidential correspondence, of which the Duke of 
Portland permitted Sir James Mackintosh to take a copy. 



WILLIAM III. 155 

firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and 
deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pensive, 
severe, and solemn aspect could scarcely have belonged to 
a happy or a good-natured man. But it indicates in a 
manner not to be mistaken capacity equal to the most ar- 
duous enterprises, and fortitude not to be shaken by re- 
verses or dangers. 

Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities 
of a great ruler, and education had developed those quali- 
ties in no common degree. With strong natural sense 
and rare force of will, he found himself, when first his 
mind began to open, a fatherless and motherless child, the 
chief of a great but depressed and disheartened party, and 
the heir to vast and indefinite pretensions, which excited 
the dread and aversion of the oligarchy, then supreme in 
the United Provinces. The common people, fondly at- 
tached during a century to his house, indicated whenever 
they saw him, in a manner not to be mistaken, that they 
regarded him as their rightful head. The able and expe- 
rienced ministers of the Eepublic, mortal enemies of his 
name, came every day to pay their feigned civilities to him, 
and to observe the progress of his mind. The first move- 
ments of his ambition were carefully watched ; every un- 
guarded word uttered by him was noted down ; nor had 
he near him any adviser on whose judgment reliance could 
be placed. He was scarcely fifteen years old when all the 
domestics who were attached to his interest, or who en- 
joyed any share of his confidence, were removed from un- 
der his roof by the jealous government. He remonstrated 
with energy beyond his years, but in vain. Vigilant ob- 
servers saw the tears more than once rise in the eyes of 
the young state prisoner. His health, naturally delicate, 
sank for a time under the emotions which his desolate sit- 
uation had produced. Such situations bewilder and un- 
nerve the weak, but call forth all the strength of the 
strong. Surrounded by snares in which an ordinary youth 
would have perished, William learned to tread at once 
warily and firmly. Long before he reached manhood he 
knew how to keep secrets, how to baffle curiosity by dry 
and guarded answers, how to conceal all passions under 
the same show of grave tranquillity. Meanwhile, he made 



156 macatjlay's miscellaneous writings. 

little proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplish- 
ments. The manners of the Dutch nobility of that age 
wanted the grace which was found in the highest perfec- 
tion among the gentlemen of France, and which, in an 
inferior degree, embellished the court, of England ; and 
his manners were altogether Dutch. Even his countrymen 
thought him blunt. To foreigners he often seemed churl- 
ish. In his intercourse with the world in general he ap- 
peared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double 
the value of a favour and take away the sting of a refusal. 
He was little interested in letters or science. The discov- 
eries of Newton and Leibnitz, the poems of Dry den and 
Boileau, were unknown to him. Dramatic performances 
tired him ; and he was glad to turn away from the stage 
and to talk about public affairs while Orestes was raving, 
or while Tartuffe was pressing Elvira's hand. He had, 
indeed, some talent for sarcasm, and not seldom employed, 
quite unconsciously, a natural rhetoric, quaint indeed, but 
vigorous and original. He did not, however, in the least 
affect the character of a wit or of an orator. His atten- 
tion had been confined to those studies which form strenu- 
ous and sagacious men of business. From a child he lis- 
tened with interest when high questions of alliance, finance, 
and war were discussed. Of geometry he learned as much 
as was necessary for the construction of a ravelin or horn- 
work. Of languages, by the help of a memory singularly 
powerful, he learned as much as was necessary to enable 
him to comprehend and answer without assistance every 
thing that was said to him, and every letter which he 
received. The Dutch was his own tongue. He under- 
stood Latin, Italian and Spanish. He spoke and wrote 
French, English, and German, inelegantly, it is true, and 
inexactly, but fluently and intelligibly. No qualification 
could be more important to a man whose life was to be 
passed in organizing great alliances and in commanding 
armies assembled from different countries. 

One class of philosophical questions had been forced on 
his attention by circumstances, and seems to have inter- 
ested him more than might have been expected from his 
general character. Among the Protestants of the United 
Provinces, as among the Protestants of our island, there 



WILLIAM in. 157 

were two great religious parties which almost exactly coin- 
cided with two great political parties. The chiefs of the 
municipal oligarchy were Arminians, and were commonly 
regarded by the multitude as little better than Papists. 
The Princes of Orange had generally been the patrons of 
the Calvinistic divinity, and owed no small part of their 
popularity to their zeal for the doctrines of election and 
final perseverance, a zeal not always enlightened by know- 
ledge or tempered by humanity. William had been care- 
fully instructed from a child in the theological system to 
which his family was attached, and regarded that system 
with even more than the partiality which men generally 
feel for an hereditary faith. He had ruminated on the 
great enigmas which had been discussed in the Synod of 
Dort, and had found in the austere and inflexible logic of 
the Genevese school something which suited his intellect 
and his temper. That example of intolerance, indeed, 
which some of his predecessors had set, he never imitated. 
For all persecution he felt a fixed aversion, which he 
avowed, not only where the avowal was obviously politic, 
but on occasions where it seemed that his interest would 
have been promoted by dissimulation or by silence. His 
theological opinions, however, were even more decided 
than those of his ancestors. The tenet of predestination 
was the keystone of his religion. He even declared that 
if he were to abandon that tenet, he must abandon with 
it all belief in a superintending Providence, and must be- 
come a mere Epicurean. Except in this single instance, 
all the sap of his vigorous mind was early drawn away 
from the speculative to the practical. The faculties which 
are necessary for the conduct of great affairs ripened in 
him at a time of life when they have scarcely begun to 
blossom in ordinary men. Since Octavius the world had 
seen no such instance of precocious statesmanship. Skil- 
ful diplomatists were surprised to hear the weighty obser- 
vations which at seventeen the prince made on public affairs, 
and still more surprised to see the lad, in situations in 
which he might have been expected to betray strong pas- 
sion, preserve a composure as imperturbable as their own. 
At eighteen he sat among the fathers of the Common- 
wealth, grave, discreet, and judicious as the oldest among 



158 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 

them. At twenty-one, in a day of gloom and terror, he 
was placed at the head of the administration. At twenty- 
three he was renowned throughout Europe as a soldier and 
a politician. He had put domestic factions under his feet ; 
he was the soul of a mighty coalition ; and he had con- 
tended with honour in the field against some of the great- 
est generals of the age. 

His personal tastes were those rather of a warrior than 
of a statesman; but he, like his great-grandfather, the 
silent prince who founded the Batavian commonwealth, 
occupies a far higher place among statesmen than among 
warriors. The event of battles, indeed, is not an unfailing 
test of the abilities of a commander ; and it would be pe- 
culiarly unjust to apply this test to William ; for it was 
his fortune to be almost always opposed to captains who 
were consummate masters of their art, and to troops far 
superior in discipline to his own ; yet there is reason to 
believe that he was by no means equal, as a general in 
the field, to some who ranked far below him in intellectual 
powers. To those whom he trusted he spoke on this sub- 
ject with the magnanimous frankness of a man who had 
done great things, and who could well afford to acknow- 
ledge some deficiencies. He had never, he said, served an 
apprenticeship to the military profession. He had been 
placed, while still a boy, at the head of an army. Among 
his officers there had been none competent to instruct him. 
His own blunders and their consequences had been his 
only lessons. "I would give," he once exclaimed, "a 
good part of my estates to have served a few campaigns 
under the prince of Conde before I had to command 
against him." It is not improbable that the circum- 
stance which prevented William from attaining any emi- 
nent dexterity in strategy may , have been favourable to 
the general vigour of his intellect. If his battles were 
not those of a great tactician, they entitled him to be 
called a great man. No disaster could for one moment 
deprive him of his firmness or of the entire possession of 
all his faculties. His defeats were repaired with such 
marvellous celerity that, before his enemies had sung the 
Te Deum, he was again ready for conflict; nor did his 
adverse fortune ever deprive him of the respect and confi- 



WILLIAM in. 159 

dence of his soldiers. That respect and confidence he 
owed in no small measure to his personal courage. Cour- 
age in the degree which is necessary to carry a soldier 
without disgrace through a campaign is possessed, or 
might, under proper training, be acquired, by the great 
majority of men ; but courage like that of William is rare 
indeed. He was proved by every test ; by war, by wounds, 
by painful and depressing maladies, by raging seas, by the 
imminent and constant risk of assassination, a risk which 
has shaken very strong nerves, a risk which severely tried 
even the adamantine fortitude of Cromwell; yet none 
could ever discover what that thing was which the Prince 
of Orange feared. His advisers could with difficulty in- 
duce him to take any precaution against the pistols and 
daggers of conspirators.* Old sailors were amazed at the 
composure which he preserved amid roaring breakers on a 
perilous coast. In battle his bravery made him conspicuous 
even among tens of thousands of brave warriors, drew 
forth the generous applause of hostile armies, and was 
never questioned even by the injustice of hostile factions. 
During his first campaigns he exposed himself like a man 
who sought for death ; was always foremost in the charge 
and last in the retreat ; fought, sword in hand, in the 
thickest press ; and, with a musket-ball in his arm and the 
blood streaming over his cuirass, still stood his ground and 
waved his hat under the hottest fire. His friends adjured 
him to take more care of a life invaluable to his country ; 
and his most illustrious antagonist, the great Cond£, re- 
marked, after the bloody day of Seneff, that the Prince of 
Orange had in all things borne himself like an old general, 
except in exposing himself like a young soldier. William 
denied that he was guilty of temerity. It was, he said, 

* William was earnestly entreated by his friends, after the peace 
of Ryswick, to speak seriously to the French ambassador about the 
schemes of assassination which the Jacobites of St. Germain's were 
constantly contriving. The cold magnanimity with which these in- 
timations of danger were received is singularly characteristic. To 
Bentinck, who had sent from Paris very alarming intelligence, Wil- 
liam merely replied at the end of a long letter of business, " Pour 
les assasins je nc luy en ay pas voulu parler, croiant que e'etoit ou 
desous de moy." — May 2 — 12, 1698. I keep the original orthography, 
if it is to be so called. 



160 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

from a sense of duty, and on a cool calculation of what the 
public interest required, that he was always at the post of 
danger. The troops which he commanded had been little 
used to war, and shrank from a close encounter with the 
veteran soldiery of France. It was necessary that their 
leader should show them how battles were to be won. 
And, in truth, more than one day which -had seemed hope- 
lessly lost was retrieved by the hardihood with which he 
rallied his broken battalions, and cut down with his own 
hand the cowards who set the example of flight. Some- 
times, however, it seemed that he had a strange pleasure 
in venturing his person. It was remarked that his spirits 
were never so high and his manners never so gracious and 
easy as amid the tumult and carnage of a battle. Even 
in his pastimes he liked the excitement of danger. Cards, 
chess, and billiards gave him no pleasure. The chase was 
his favourite recreation ; and he loved it most when it was 
most hazardous. His leaps were sometimes such that his 
boldest companions did not like to follow him. He seems 
even to have thought the most hardy field-sports of Eng- 
land effeminate, and to have pined in the great park of 
Windsor for the game which he had been used to drive to 
bay in the forests of Guelders, wolves, and wild boars, 
and huge stags with sixteen antlers.* 

The audacity of his spirit was the more remarkable 
because his physical organization was unusually delicate. 
From a child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime 
of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by a se- 
vere attack of small-pox. He was asthmatic and con- 
sumptive. His slender frame was shaken by a constant 
hoarse cough. He could not sleep unless his head was 
propped by several pillows, and could scarcely draw his 
breath in any but the .purest air. Cruel headaches fre- 

* From Windsor he wrote to Bentinck, then ambassador at Paris, 
" J'ay pris avent hier un cerf dans la forest avec les chains du Pr. de 
Denm. et ay fait un assez jolie chasse, antant que ce vilain paiis le 
permest" — March 20 — April 1, 1698. The spelling is bad, but not 
worse than Napoleon's. William wrote in better humour from Loo : — 
" Nous avons pris deux gros cerfs, le premier dans Dorewaert, qui est 
un des plus gros que je sache avoir jamais pris. II porte seize." — 
Oct. 25— Nov. 4, 1697* 



WILLIAM III. 161 

quently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. The 
physicians constantly kept up the hopes of his enemies by 
fixing some date beyond which, if there were any thing 
certain in medical science, it was impossible that his bro- 
ken constitution could hold out. Yet, through a life which 
was one long disease, the force of his mind never failed, 
on any great occasion, to bear up his suffering and languid 
body. 

He was born with violent passions and quick sensibili- 
ties ; but the strength of his emotions was not suspected 
by the world. From the multitude, his joy and his grief, 
his affection and his resentment, were hidden by a phleg- 
matic serenity, which made him pass for the most cold- 
blooded of mankind. Those who brought him good news 
could seldom detect any sign of pleasure. Those who saw 
him after a defeat looked in vain for any trace of vexation. 
He praised and reprimanded, rewarded and punished, with 
the stern tranquillity of a Mohawk chief; but those who 
knew him well and saw him near, were aware that under 
all this ice a fierce fire was constantly burning. It was 
seldom that anger deprived him of power over himself; 
but when he was really enraged, the first outbreak of his 
passion was terrible. It was, indeed, scarcely safe to 
approach him. On these rare occasions, however, as soon 
as he regained his self-command, he made such ample 
reparation to those whom he had wronged, as tempted 
them to wish that he w^ould go into a fury again. His 
affection was as impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, 
he loved with the whole energy of his strong mind. When 
death separated him from what he loved, the few who wit- 
nessed his agonies trembled for his reason and his life. 
To a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidel- 
ity and secrecy he could absolutely depend, he was a differ- 
ent man from the reserved and stoical William whom the 
multitude supposed to be destitute of human feelings. 
He was kind, cordial, open, even convivial and jocose, 
would sit at table many hours, and would bear his full 
share in festive conversation. Highest in his favour stood 
a gentleman of his household named Bentinck, sprung 
from a noble Batavian race, and destined to be the founder 
of one of the great patrician houses of England. Tho 



162 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WKITTNGS. 

fidelity of Bentinck had been tried by no common test. 
It was while the United Provinces were struggling for ex- 
istence against the French power, that the young prince 
on whom all their hopes were fixed was seized by the 
small-pox. That disease had been fatal to many members 
of his family, and at first wore, in his case, a peculiarly 
malignant aspect. The public consternation was great. 
The streets of the Hague were crowded from daybreak to 
sunset by persons anxiously asking how his highness was. 
At length his complaint took a favourable turn. His es- 
cape was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, 
and partly to the intrepid and indefatigable friendship of 
Bentinck. From the hands of Bentinck alone William 
took food and medicine. By Bentinck alone William was 
lifted from his bed and laid down in it. "Whether Ben- 
tinck slept or not while I was ill," said William to Tem- 
ple, with great tenderness, " I know not ; but this I know, 
that, through sixteen days and nights, I never once called 
for any thing but that Bentinck was instantly at my side." 
Before the faithful servant had entirely performed his task, 
he had himself caught the contagion. Still, however, he 
bore up against drowsiness and fever till his master was 
pronounced convalescent. Then, at length, Bentinck asked 
leave to go home. It was time ; for his limbs would no 
longer support him. He was in great danger, but recov- 
ered, and, as soon as he left his bed, hastened to the army, 
where, during many sharp campaigns, he was ever found, 
as he had been in peril of a different kind, close to Wil- 
liam's side. 

Such was the origin of a friendship as warm and pure 
as any that ancient or modern history records. The de- 
scendants of Bentinck still preserve many letters written 
by William to their ancestor ; and it is not too much to 
say, that no person who has not studied those letters can 
form a correct notion of the prince's character. He whom 
even his admirers generally accounted the most distant 
and frigid of men, here forgets all distinctions of rank, 
and pours out all his feelings with the ingenuousness of a 
schoolboy. He imparts without reserve secrets of the 
highest moment. He explains with perfect simplicity vast 
designs affecting all the governments of Europe. Mingled 



WILLIAM III. 163 

with his communications on such subjects are other com- 
munications of a very different, but perhaps not of a less 
interesting kind. All his adventures, all his personal 
feelings, his long run after enormous stags, his carousals 
on St. Hubert's Day, the growth of his plantations, the 
failure of his melons, the state of his stud, his wish to 
procure an easy pad-nag for his wife, his vexation at learn- 
ing that one of his household, after ruining a girl of good 
family, refused to marry her, his fits of sea-sickness, his 
coughs, his headaches, his devotional moods, his gratitude 
for the Divine protection after a great escape, his struggles 
to submit himself to the Divine will after a disaster, are 
described with an amiable garrulity hardly to have been 
expected from the most discreet and sedate statesman of 
the age. Still more remarkable is the careless effusion of 
his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes 
in his friend's domestic felicity. When an heir is born to 
Bentinck, " He will live, I hope," says William, " to be as 
good a fellow as you are ; and, if I should have a son, our 
children will love each other, I hope, as we have done." * 
Through life he continues to regard the little Bentincks 
with paternal kindness. He calls them by endearing di- 
minutives ; he takes charge of them in their father's ab- 
sence, and, though vexed at being forced to refuse them 
any pleasure, will not suffer them to go on a hunting par- 
ty, where there would be risk of a push from a stag's horn, 
or to sit up late at a riotous supper. f When their mother 
is taken ill during her husband's absence, William, in the 
midst of business of the highest moment, finds time to 
send off several expresses in one day with short notes 
containing intelligence of her state.J On one occasion, 
when he is pronounced out of danger after a severe attack, 
the prince breaks forth into fervent expressions of grati- 

* March 3, 1679. 

f " Viola en peu de mot le detail de nostre St. Hubert. Et j'ay 
eu soin que M. Woodstoc " (Bentinck's eldest son) " n'a point este a 
la chasse, bien moin au soupe, quoyqu'il fut icy. Yons pouvez pour- 
tant croire que de n'avoir par chasse l'a un peu mortifie, mais je ne 
Pay pas ause prendre sur rnoy, puisque vous m'ayiez dit que vous ne 
la souhai tiez pas." From Loo, Nov. 4, 1697. 

t On the 15th of June, 1688. 



164 macatjlay's miscellaneous wbitings. 

tude to God. " I write," lie says, " with tears of joy in 
my eyes."* There is a singular charm in such letters, 
penned by a man whose irresistible energy and inflexible 
firmness extorted the respect of his enemies, whose cold 
and ungracious demeanour repelled the attachment of al- 
most all his partisans, and whose mind was occupied by 
gigantic schemes which have changed the face of the 
world. 

His kindness was not misplaced. Bentinck was early 
pronounced by Temple to be the best and truest servant 
that ever prince had the good fortune to possess, and con- 
tinued through life to merit that honourable character. 
The friends were indeed made for each other. William 
wanted neither a guide nor a flatterer. Having a firm and 
just reliance on his own judgment, he was not partial to 
counsellors who dealt much in suggestions and objections. 
At the same time, he had too much discernment, and too 
much elevation of mind, to be gratified by sycophancy. 
The confidant of such a prince ought to be a man, not of 
inventive genius or commanding spirit, but brave and 
faithful, capable of executing orders punctually, of keep- 
ing secrets inviolably, of observing facts vigilantly, and 
of reporting them truly ; and such a man was Bentinck. 

William was not less fortunate in marriage than in 
friendship; yet his marriage had not at first promised 
much domestic happiness. His choice had been deter- 
mined chiefly by political considerations ; nor did it seem 
likely that any strong affection would grow up between a 
handsome girl of sixteen, well disposed indeed, and natu- 
rally intelligent, but ignorant and simple, and a bride- 
groom who, though he had not completed his twenty-eighth 
year, was in constitution older than her father, whose 
manner was chilling, and whose head was constantly oc- 
cupied by public business or by field sports. For a time 
William was a negligent husband. He was, indeed, 
drawn away from his wife by other women, particularly 
by one of her ladies, Elizabeth Villiers, who, though des- 
titute of personal attractions, and disfigured by a hideous 
squint, possessed talents which well fitted her to partake 

* Sept. 6, 1679. 



KAET II. 165 

his cares.* He was, indeed, ashamed of his errors, and 
spared no pains to conceal them ; but, in spite of all his 
precautions, Mary well knew that he was not strictly 
faithful to her. Spies and tale-bearers, encouraged by her 
father, did their best to inflame her resentment. A man 
of a very different character, the excellent Ken, who was 
her chaplain at the Hague during some months, was so 
much incensed by her wrongs, that he, with more zeal 
than discretion, threatened to reprimand her husband 
severely .f She, however, bore her injuries with a meek- 
ness and patience which deserved, and gradually obtained, 
William's esteem, and gratitude. Yet there still remained 
one cause of estrangement. . A time would probably come 
when the princess, who had been educated only to work 
embroidery, to play on the spinet, and to read the Bible 
and the Whole Duty of Man, would be the chief of a 
great monarchy, and would hold the balance of Europe, 
while her lord, ambitious, versed in affairs, and bent on 
great enterprises, would find in the British government no 
place marked out for him, and would hold power only from 
her bounty and during her pleasure. It is not strange 
that a man so fond of authority as William, and so con- 
scious of a genius for command, should have strongly felt 
that jealousy which, during a few hours of royalty, put 
dissension between Guilford Dudley and the Lady Jane, 
and which produced a rupture still more tragical between 
Darnley and the Queen of Scots. The Princess of Orange 
had not the faintest suspicion of her husband's feelings. 
Her preceptor, Bishop Compton, had instructed her care- 
fully in religion, and had especially guarded her mind 
against the arts of Koman Catholic divines, but had left 
her profoundly ignorant of the English Constitution and 
of her own position. She knew that her marriage vow 
bound her to obey her husband ; and it had never occurred 
to her that the relation in which they stood to each other 
might one day be inverted. She had been nine years 
married before she discovered the cause of William's dis- 
content ; nor would she ever have learned it from himself. 

* See Swift's account of her in the Journal to Stella, 
f Henry Sidney's Journal of March 31, 1680, in Mr. Blencowe'i 
interesting collection. 



166 macaulay's miscellaneous whitings. 

In general, his temper inclined him rather to brood over 
his griefs, than to give utterance to them; and in this 
particular case his lips were sealed by a very natural deli- 
cacy. At length a complete explanation and reconciliation 
were brought about by the agency of Gilbert Burnet. 

The fame of Burnet has been attacked with singular 
malice and pertinacity. The attack began early in his 
life, and is still carried on with undiminished vigour, 
though he has now been more than a century and a quar- 
ter in his grave. He is, indeed, as fair a mark as factious 
animosity and petulant wit could desire. The faults of 
his understanding and temper lie on the surface, and can- 
not be missed. They were not the faults which are ordi- 
narily considered as belonging to his country. Alone 
among the many Scotchmen who have raised themselves to 
distinction and prosperity in England, he had that char- 
acter which satirists, novelists, and dramatists have agreed 
to ascribe to Irish adventurers. His high animal spirits, 
his boastfulness, his undissembled vanity, his propensity to 
blunder, his provoking indiscretion, his unabashed auda- 
city, afforded inexhaustible subjects of ridicule to the 
Tories. Nor did his enemies omit to compliment him, 
sometimes with more pleasantry than delicacy, on the 
breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his calves, and 
his success in matrimonial projects on amorous and opulent 
widows. Yet Burnet, though open in many respects to 
ridicule, and even to serious censure, was no contemptible 
man. His parts were quick, his industry unwearied, his 
reading various and most extensive. He was at once an 
historian, an antiquary, a theologian, a preacher, a pam- 
phleteer, a debater, and an active political leader ; and in 
every one of those characters made himself conspicuous 
among able competitors. The many spirited tracts which 
he wrote on passing events are now known only to the 
curious ; but his History of his Own Times, his History 
of the Keformation, his exposition of the Articles, his 
Discourse of Pastoral Care, his Life of Hale, his Life of 
Wilmot, are still reprinted, nor is any good private library 
without them. Against such a fact as this all the efforts 
of detractors are vain. A writer, whose voluminous works, 
in several branches of literature, find numerous readers a 



BISHOP BURlSrET. 167 

hundred and thirty years after his death, may have had 
great faults, but must also have had great merits ; and 
Burnet had great merits, a fertile and vigorous mind, and 
a style far indeed removed from faultless purity, but 
always clear, often lively, and sometimes rising to solemn 
and fervid eloquence. In the pulpit the effect of his dis- 
courses, which were delivered without any note, was 
heightened by a noble figure and by pathetic action. He 
was often interrupted by the deep hum of his audience ; 
and when, after preaching out the hour-glass, which in 
those days w^as part of the furniture of the pulpit, he held 
it up in his hand, the congregation clamorously encouraged 
him to go on till the sand had run off once more.* In 
his moral character, as in his intellect, great blemishes 
were more than compensated by great excellence. Though 
often misled by prejudice and passion, he was emphatically 
an honest man. Though he was not secure from the se- 
ductions of vanity, his spirit was raised high above the 
influence either of cupidity or of fear. His nature was 
kind, generous, grateful, forgiving, f His religious zeal, 
though steady and ardent, was in general restrained by 
humanity, and by a respect for the rights of conscience. 
Strongly attached to what he regarded as the spirit of 
Christianity, he looked with indifference on rites, names, 
and forms of ecclesiastical polity, and was by no means 
disposed to be severe even on infidels and heretics whose 
lives were pure, and whose errors appeared to be the effect 
rather of some perversion of the understanding than of 

* Speaker Onslow's note on Burnet, i. 596 ; Johnson's Life of 
Sprat. 

t No person lias contradicted Burnet more frequently or with more 
asperity than Dartmouth ; yet Dartmouth says, " I do not think he 
designedly published any thing he believed to be false." Even Swift 
has the justice to say, " After all, he was a man of generosity and 
good nature."— Short Remarks on Bishop Burnet's History. 

It is usual to censure Burnet as a singularly inaccurate historian, 
but I believe the charge to be altogether unjust. He appears to be 
singularly inaccurate only because his narrative has been subjected to 
a scrutiny singularly severe and unfriendly. If any Whig thought it 
worth while to subject Reresby's Memoirs, North's Examen, Mul- 
grave's Account of the Revolution, or the Life of James the Second, 
edited by Clarke, to a similar scrutiny, it would soon appear that 
Burnet was far indeed from being the most inexact writer of his time. 



168 MACATJLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

the depravity of the heart. But, like many other good 
men of that age, he regarded the case of the Church of 
Eome as an exception to all ordinary rules. 

Burnet, during some years, had had a European repu- 
tation. His history of the Eeformation had been received 
with loud applause by all Protestants, and had been felt 
by the Eoman Catholics as a severe blow. The greatest 
doctor that the Church of Eome has produced since the 
schism of the sixteenth century, Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, 
was engaged in framing an elaborate reply. Burnet had 
been honoured by a vote of thanks from one of the zealous 
Parliaments which had sat during the excitement of the 
Popish Plot, and had been exhorted, in the name of the 
Commons of England, to continue his historical researches. 
He had been admitted to familiar conversation both with 
Charles and James, had lived on terms of close intimacy 
with several distinguished statesmen, particularly with 
Halifax, and had been the spiritual director of some per- 
sons of the highest note. He had reclaimed from atheism 
and from licentiousness one of the most brilliant libertines 
of the age, John Wilmot, earl of Eochester. Lord Staf- 
ford, the victim of Oates, had, though a Eoman Catholic, 
been edified in his last hours by Burnet's exhortations 
touching those points on which all Christians agree. A 
few years later, a more illustrious sufferer, Lord Eussell, 
had been accompanied by Burnet from the Tower to the 
scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The court had neglected 
no means of gaining so active and able a divine. Neither 
royal blandishments nor promises of valuable preferment 
had been spared. But Burnet, though infected in early 
youth by those servile doctrines which were commonly 
held by the clergy of that age, had become, on conviction, 
a Whig, and firmly adhered, through all vicissitudes, to 
his principles. He had, however, no part in that conspir- 
acy which brought so much disgrace and calamity on the 
Whig party, and not only abhorred the murderous designs 
of Goodenough and Ferguson, but was of opinion that 
even his beloved and honoured friend Eussell had gone to 
unjustifiable lengths against the government. A time at 
length arrived when innocence was not a sufficient protec- 
tion. Burnet, though not guilty of any legal offence, was 



BISHOP BURNET. 169 

pursued by the vengeance of the court. He retired to the 
Continent, and, after passing about a year in those wan- 
derings through Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, of 
which he has left us an agreeable narrative, reached the 
Hague in the summer of 1686, and was received there 
with kindness and respect. He had many free conversa- 
tions with the princess on politics and religion, and soon 
became her spiritual director and confidential adviser. 
William proved a much more gracious host than could have 
been expected ; for, of all faults, officiousness and indiscre- 
tion were the most offensive to him, and Burnet was al- 
lowed even by friends and admirers to be the most officious 
and indiscreet of mankind ; but the sagacious prince per- 
ceived that this pushing, talkative divine, who was always 
blabbing secrets, asking impertinent questions, obtruding 
unasked advice, was nevertheless an upright, courageous, 
and able man, well acquainted with the temper and the 
views of British sects and factions. The fame of Burnet's 
eloquence and erudition was also widely spread. William 
was not himself a reading man. But he had now been 
many years at the head of the Dutch administration, in an 
age when the Dutch press was one of the most formidable 
engines by which the public mind of Europe was moved, 
and, though he had no taste for literary pleasures, was far 
too wise and too observant to be ignorant of the value of 
literary assistance. He was aware that a popular pam- 
phlet might sometimes be of as much service as a victory 
in the field. He also felt the importance of having always 
near him some person well informed as to the civil and 
ecclesiastical polity of our island ; and Burnet was emi- 
nently qualified to be of use as a living dictionary of 
British affairs ; for his knowledge, though not always ac- 
curate, was of immense extent, and there were in England 
and Scotland few eminent men of any political or religious 
party with whom he had not conversed. He was therefore 
admitted to as large a share of favour and confidence as 
was granted to any but those who composed the very small 
inmost knot of the prince's private friends. When the 
doctor took liberties, which was not seldom the case, his 
patron became more than usually cold and sullen, and 
sometimes uttered a short, dry sarcasm, which would have 
8 



170 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

struck dumb any person of ordinary assurance. In spite 
of such occurrences, however, the amity between this sin- 
gular pair continued, with some temporary interruptions, 
till it was dissolved by death. Indeed, it was not easy to 
wound Burnet's feelings. His self-complacency, his ani 
mal spirits, and his want of tact were such that, though 
he frequently gave offence, he never took it. 

All the peculiarities of his character fitted him to be 
the peace-maker between William and Mary. Where 
persons who ought to esteem and love each other are kept 
asunder, as often happens, by some cause which three 
words of frank explanation would remove, they are fortu- 
nate if they possess an indiscreet friend who blurts out 
the whole truth. Burnet plainly told the princess what 
the feeling was which preyed upon her husband's mind. 
She learned for the first time, with no small astonishment, 
that when she became Queen of England William would 
not share her throne. She warmly declared that there 
was no proof of conjugal submission and affection which 
she was not ready to give. Burnet, with many apologies, 
and with solemn protestations that no human being had 
put words into his mouth, informed her that the remedy 
was in her own hands. She might easily, when the crown 
devolved on her, induce her Parliament not only to give 
the regal title to her husband, but even to transfer to him 
by a legislative act the administration of the government. 
" But," he added, " your royal highness ought to consider 
well before you announce any such resolution ; for it is a 
resolution which, having once been announced, cannot 
safely or easily be retracted." " I want no time for con- 
sideration," answered Mary. "It is enough that I have 
an opportunity of showing my regrrd for the prince. Tell 
him what I say ; and bring him to me, that he may hear 
it from my own lips." Burnet went in quest of William ; 
but William was many miles off after a stag. It was not 
till the next day that the decisive interview took place. 
" I did not know till yesterday," said Mary, "that there 
was such a difference between the laws of England and 
the laws of God. But I now promise you that you shall 
always bear rule ; and, in return, I ask only this, that, as 
I shall observe the precept which enjoins wives to obey 



JOHX DBYDEN. 171 

their husbands, you will observe that which enjoins hus- 
bands to love their wives." Her generous affection com- 
pletely gained the heart of William. From that time till 
the sad day when he was carried away in fits from her 
dying bed, there was entire friendship and confidence be- 
tween them. Many of her letters to him are extant, and 
they contain abundant evidence that this man, unamiable 
as he was in the eyes of the multitude, had succeeded in 
inspiring a beautiful and virtuous woman, born his supe- 
rior, with a passion fond even to idolatry. 

The service which Burnet had rendered to his country 
was of high moment. A time had arrived at which it 
was important to the public safety that there should be 
entire concord between the prince and the princess. 



JOHN DKYDEN. 

Dryden was now approaching the decline of life. After 
many successes and many failures, he had at length attained, 
by general consent, the first place among living English 
poets. His claims on the gratitude of James were supe- 
rior to those of any other man of letters in the kingdom. 
But James cared little for verses and much for money. 
From the day of his accession he set himself to make small 
economical reforms, such as bring on a government the re- 
proach of meanness without producing any perceptible 
relief to the finances. One of the victims of his injudi- 
cious parsimony was the poet laureate. Orders were given 
that, in the new patent which the demise of the crown 
made necessary, the annual butt of sack originally grant- 
ed to Jonson, and continued to Jonson's successors, 
should be omitted.* This was the only notice which the 
king, during the first year of his reign, deigned to bestow 
on the mighty satirist who, in the very crisis of the great 
struggle of the Exclusion Bill, had spread terror through 

* This fact, -which escaped the minute researches of Malone, ap- 
pears from the Treasury Letter Book of 1685. 



172 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

the Whig ranks. Dryden was poor and impatient of 
poverty. He knew little and cared little about religion. 
If any sentiment was deeply fixed in him, that sentiment 
was an aversion to priests of all persuasions, Levites, au- 
gurs, muftis, Eoman Catholic divines, Presbyterian divines, 
divines of the Church of England. He was not naturally 
a man of high spirit ; and his pursuits had been by no 
means such as were likely to give elevation or delicacy to 
his mind. He had, during many years, earned his daily 
bread by pandering to the vicious taste of the pit, and by 
grossly flattering rich and noble patrons. Self-respect 
and a fine sense of the becoming were not to be expected 
from one who had led a life of mendicancy and adulation. 
Finding that, if he continued to call himself a Protestant, 
his services would be overlooked, he declared himself a 
Papist. The king's parsimony instantly relaxed. Dryden 
was gratified with a pension of a hundred pounds a year, 
and was employed to defend his new religion both in prose 
and verse. 

Two eminent men, Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott, 
have done their best to persuade themselves and others 
that this memorable conversion was sincere. It was natu- 
ral that they should be desirous to remove a disgraceful 
stain from the memory of one whose genius they justly 
admired, and with whose political feelings they strongly 
sympathized ; but the impartial historian must with regret 
pronounce a very different judgment. There will always 
be a strong presumption against the sincerity of a conver- 
sion by which the convert is directly a gainer. In the 
case of Dryden there is nothing to countervail this pre- 
sumption. His theological writings abundantly prove that 
he had never sought with diligence and anxiety to learn 
the truth, and that his knowledge both of the Church 
which he quitted and of the Church which he entered was 
of the most superficial kind. Nor was his subsequent 
conduct that of a man whom a strong sense of duty had 
constrained to take a step of awful importance. Had he 
been such a man, the same conviction which had led him 
to join the Church of Kome would surely have prevented 
him from violating grossly and habitually rules which that 
Church in common with every other Christian society, 



THE DUCHESS OF MAELBOEOUGH. 173 

recognizes as binding. There would have been a marked 
distinction between his earlier and his later compositions. 
He would have looked back with remorse on a literary life 
of near thirty years, during which his rare powers of dic- 
tion and versification had been systematically employed 
in spreading moral corruption. Not a line tending to 
make virtue contemptible, or to inflame licentious desire, 
would thenceforward have proceeded from his pen. The 
truth unhappily is, that the dramas which he wrote after 
his pretended conversion, are in no respect less impure or 
profane than those of his youth. Even when he professed 
to translate, he constantly wandered from his originals in 
search of images which, if he had found them in his origi- 
nals, he ought to have shunned. What was bad became 
worse in his versions. What was innocent contracted a 
taint from passing through his mind. He made the gross- 
est satires of Juvenal more gross, interpolated loose de- 
scriptions in the tales of Boccaccio, and polluted the sweet 
and limpid poetry of the Georgics with filth which would 
have moved the loathing of Virgil. 



THE DUCHESS OF MAELBOROUGH. 

The name of this celebrated favourite was Sarah Jennings. 
Her eldest sister, Frances, had been distinguished by 
beauty and levity even among the crowd of beautiful faces 
and light characters which adorned and disgraced White- 
hall during the wild carnival of the Kestoration. On one 
occasion Frances dressed herself like an orange girl, and 
cried fruit about the streets.* Sober people predicted that 
a girl of so little discretion and delicacy would not easily 
find a husband. She was, however, twice married, and 
was now the wife of Tyrconnel. "Sarah, less regularly 
beautiful, was perhaps more attractive. Her face was ex- 
pressive ; her form wanted no feminine charm ; and the 

* Grammont's Memoirs ; Pepys' Diary, Feb. 21, 1681 — 5. 



174 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

profusion of her fine hair, not yet disguised by powder, 
according to that barbarous fashion which she lived to see 
introduced, was the delight of numerous admirers. Among 
the gallants who sued for her favour, Churchill, young, 
handsome, graceful, insinuating, eloquent, and brave, ob 
tained the preference. He must have been enamoured in- 
deed ; for he had little property except the annuity which 
he had bought with the infamous wages bestowed on him 
by the Duchess of Cleveland ; he was insatiable of riches ; 
Sarah was poor ; and a plain girl with a large fortune 
was proposed to him. His love, after a struggle, prevailed 
over his avarice ; marriage only strengthened his passion ; 
and, to the last hour of his life, Sarah enjoyed the plea- 
sure and distinction of being the one human being who 
was able to mislead that far-sighted and sure-footed judg- 
ment, who was fervently loved by that cold heart, and 
who was servilely feared by that intrepid spirit. 

In a worldly sense, the fidelity of Churchill's love was 
amply rewarded. His bride, though slenderly portioned, 
brought with her a dowry, which, judiciously employed, 
made him at length a duke of England, a sovereign prince 
of the empire, the captain general of a great coalition, the 
arbiter between mighty princes, and, what he valued more, 
the wealthiest subject in Europe. She had been brought 
up from childhood with the Princess Anne, and a close 
friendship had arisen between the girls. In character 
they resembled each other very little. Anne was slow and 
taciturn. To those whom she loved she was meek. The 
form which her anger assumed was sullenness. She had 
a strong sense of religion, and was attached, even with 
bigotry, to the rites and government of the Church of 
England. Sarah was lively and voluble, domineered over 
those whom she regarded with most kindness, and, when 
she was offended, vented her rage in tears and tempestuous 
reproaches. To sanctity she made no pretence, and, in- 
deed, narrowly escaped the imputation of irreligion. She 
was not yet what she became when one class of vices had 
been fully developed in her by prosperity, and another by 
adversity, when her brain had been turned by success and 
flattery, when her heart had been ulcerated by disasters 
and mortifications. She lived to be that most odious and 



THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. 1Y5 

miserable of human beings, an ancient crone at war with 
her whole kind, at war with her own children and grand- 
children, great indeed and rich, but valuing greatness and 
riches chiefly because they enabled her to brave public 
opinion, and to indulge without restraint her hatred to the 
living and the dead. In the reign of James she was re- 
garded as nothing worse than a fine, high-spirited young 
woman, who could now and then be cross and arbitrary, 
but whose flaws of temper might well be pardoned in con- 
sideration of her charms. 

It is a common observation, that differences of taste, 
understanding, and disposition, are no impediments to 
friendship, and that the closest intimacies often exist be- 
tween minds each of which supplies what is wanting to 
the other. Lady Churchill was loved and even worshipped 
by Anne. The princess could not live apart from the ob- 
ject of her romantic fondness. She married, and was a 
faithful and even an affectionate wife ; but Prince George, 
a dull man, whose chief pleasures were derived from his 
dinner and his bottle, acquired over her no influence com- 
parable to that exercised by her female friend, and soon 
gave himself up with stupid patience to the dominion of 
that vehement and commanding spirit by which his wife 
was governed. Children were born to the royal pair, and 
Anne was by no means without the feelings of a mother ; 
but the tenderness which she felt for her offspring was 
languid when compared with her devotion to the compan- 
ion of her early years. At length the princess became 
impatient of the restraint which etiquette imposed on her. 
She could not bear to hear the words Madam and Eoyal 
Highness from the lips of one who was more to her than 
a sister. Such words were indeed necessary in the gallery 
or the drawing-room, but they were disused in the closet. 
Anne was Mrs. Morley ; Lady Churchill was Mrs. Free- 
man ; and under these childish names was carried on, dur- 
ing twenty years, a correspondence on which at last the 
fate of administrations and dynasties depended. But as 
yet Anne had no political power and little patronage. 
Her friend attended her as first lady of the bed-chamber, 
with a salary of only four hundred pounds a year. There 
is reason, however, to believe that, even at this time, 



176 macaulay's miscellaneous wbitistgs. 

Churcliill was able to gratify his ruling passion by mean? 
of bis wife's influence. The princess, though her income 
was large and her tastes simple, contracted debts which 
her father, not without some murmurs, discharged ; and it 
was rumoured, that her embarrassments had been caused 
by her prodigal bounty to her favourite.* 

At length the time had arrived when this singular 
friendship was to exercise a great influence on public af- 
fairs. What part Anne would take in the contest which 
distracted England was matter of deep anxiety. Filial 
duty was on one side. The interests of the religion to 
which she was sincerely attached were on the other. A 
less inert nature might well have remained long in sus- 
pense when drawn in opposite directions by motives so 
strong and so respectable. But the influence of the Church- 
ills decided the question, and their patroness became an 
important member cf that extensive league of which the 
Prince of Orange was the head. 



AUBKEY DE VEKE, EAEL OF OXFOKD. 

The noblest subject in England, and, indeed, as English- 
men loved to say, the noblest subject in Europe, was 
Aubrey de Yere, twentieth and last of the old Earls ot 
Oxford. He derived his title through an uninterrupted 
male descent from a time when the families of Howard 
and Seymour were still obscure, when the Nevilles and 
Percies enjoyed only a provincial celebrity, and when even 
the great name of Plantagenet had not yet been heard in 
England. One chief of the house of De Vere had held 
high command at Hastings ; another had marched, with 
Godfrey and Tancred, over heaps of slaughtered Moslems, 
to the sepulchre of Christ. The first Earl of Oxford had 

* It would be endless to recount all the books from which I have 
formed my estimate of the duchess's character. Her own letters, her 
own vindication, and the replies which it called forth, have been my 
chief materials. 



CHAELES TALBOT, EARL OF SHREWSBURY. 177 

been minister of Henry Beauclerc. The third earl had 
been conspicuous among the lords who extorted the Great 
Charter from John. The seventh earl had fought bravely 
at Cressy and Poictiers. The thirteenth earl had, through 
many vicissitudes of fortune, been the chief of the partj 
of the Ked Bose, and had led the van on the decisive day 
of Bosworth. The seventeenth earl had shone at the court 
of Elizabeth, and had won for himself an honourable place 
among the early masters of English poetry. The nine- 
teenth earl had fallen in arms for the Protestant religion 
and for the liberties of Europe under the walls of Maes- 
tricht. His son Aubrey, in whom closed the longest and 
most illustrious line of nobles that England had seen, a 
man of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners, was 
lord lieutenant of Essex, and colonel of the Blues. His 
nature was not factious, and his interest inclined him to 
avoid a rupture with the court ; for his estate was encum- 
bered, and his military command lucrative. He was sum- 
moned to the royal closet, and an explicit declaration of 
his intentions was demanded from him. " Sir," answered 
Oxford, " I will stand by your majesty against all enemies 
to the last drop of my blood. But this is matter of con- 
science, and I cannot comply." He was instantly deprived 
of his lieutenancy and of his regiment* 



CHAELES TALBOT, EAEL OF SHEEWSBUEY. 

Inferior in rank and splendour to the house of De Yere, 
but to the house of De Yere alone, was the house of Tal- 
bot. Ever since the reign of Edward the Third, the Tal- 
bots had sat among the peers of the realm. The earldom 
of Shrewsbury had been bestowed, in the fifteenth centu- 

* Halstead's Succinct Genealogy of the Family of Vere, 1685 ; 
Collins's Historical Collections. See in the Lords' Journals, and in 
Jones's reports, the proceedings respecting the earldom of Oxford, in 
March and April, 1625 — 6. The exordium of the speech of Lord 
Chief Justice Crewe is among the finest specimens of the ancient 
English eloquence. Citters, Feb. 7 — 17, 1688. 

8* 



178 MACATTLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

ry, on John Talbot, the antagonist of the Maid of Orleans. 
He had been long remembered by his countrymen with 
tenderness and reverence as one of the most illustrious of 
those warriors who had striven to erect a great English 
empire on the continent of Europe. The stubborn courage 
which he had shown in the midst of disasters had made 
him an object of interest greater than more fortunate cap- 
tains had inspired, and his death had furnished a singu- 
larly touching scene to our early stage. His posterity had, 
during two centuries, flourished in great honour. The 
head of the family at the time of the Kestoration was 
Francis, the eleventh earl, a Eoman Catholic. His death 
had been attended by circumstances such as, even in those 
licentious times which immediately followed the downfall 
of the Puritan tyranny, had moved men to horror and pity. 
The Duke of Buckingham, in the course of his vagrant 
amours, was for a moment attracted by the Countess of 
Shrewsbury. She was easily won. Her lord challenged 
the gallant, and fell. Some said that the abandoned 
woman witnessed the combat in man's attire, and others 
that she clasped her victorious lover to her bosom while 
his shirt was still dripping with the blood of her husband. 
The honours of the murdered man descended to his infant 
son Charles. As the orphan grew up to man's estate, it 
was generally acknowledged that of the young nobility of 
England none had been so richly gifted by nature. His 
person was pleasing, his temper singularly sweet, his parts 
such as, if he had been born in an humble rank, might 
well have raised him to the height of civil greatness. All 
these advantages he had so improved, that, before he was 
of age, he was allowed to be one of the finest gentlemen 
and finest scholars of his time. His learning is proved by 
notes which are still extant in his handwriting on books 
in almost every department of literature. He spoke 
French like a gentleman of Louis' bed-chamber, and Ital- 
ian like a citizen of Florence. It was impossible that a 
youth of such parts should not be anxious to understand 
the grounds on which his family had refused to conform to 
the religion of the state. He studied the disputed points 
closely, submitted his doubts to priests of his own faith, 
laid their answers before Tillotson, weighed the arguments 



CHAKLES SACKYIXLE, EARL OF DORSET. 1*79 

on both sides long and attentively, and, after an investi- 
gation which occupied two years, declared himself a Pro- 
testant. The Church of England welcomed the illustri- 
ous convert with delight. His popularity was great, and 
became greater when it was known that royal solicitations 
and promises had been vainly employed to seduce him 
back to the superstition which he had abjured. The char- 
acter of the young earl did not, however, develope itself 
in a manner quite satisfactory to those who had borne the 
chief part in his conversion. His morals by no means es- 
caped the contagion of fashionable libertinism. In truth, 
the shock which had overturned his early prejudices had at 
the same time unfixed all his opinions, and left him to the 
unchecked guidance of his feelings ; but, though his prin- 
ciples were unsteady, his impulses were so generous, his 
temper so bland, his manners so gracious and easy, that it 
was impossible not to love him. He was early called the 
King of Hearts, and never, through a long, eventful, and 
checkered life, lost his right to that name.* 

Shrewsbury was lord lieutenant of Staffordshire, and 
colonel of one of the regiments of horse which had been 
raised in consequence of the western insurrection. He 
now refused to act under the board of regulators, and was 
deprived of both his commissions. 



CHAELES SACKVILLE, EAEL OF DOESET. 



None of the English nobles enjoyed a larger measure of 
public favour than Charles Sackville, earl of Dorset. He 
was, indeed, a remarkable man. In his youth he had been 
one of the most notorious libertines of the wild time which 
followed the Eestoration. He had been the terror of the 

* Coxe's Shrewsbury Correspondence ; Mackay's Memoirs ; Life 
of Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, 1718 ; Burnet, i. 762 ; Birch's Life 
of Tillotson, where the reader will find a letter from Tillotson to 
Shrewsbury, which seems to me a model of serious, friendly, and 
gentlemanlike reproof. 



180 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

city watch, had passed many nights in the round house, 
and had at least once occupied a cell in Newgate. His 
passion for Betty Morrice and for Nell Gwynn, who always 
called him her Charles the First, had given no small 
amusement and scandal to the town. Yet, in the midst 
of follies and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine under- 
standing, and his natural goodness of heart, had been con- 
spicuous. Men said that the excesses in which he indulged 
were common between him and the whole race of gay 
young Cavaliers, but that his sympathy with human suffer- 
ing and the generosity with which he made reparation to 
those whom his freaks had injured, were all his own. His 
associates were astonished by the distinction which the 
public made between him and them. " He may do what 
he chooses," saidWilmot; "he is never in the wrong." 
The judgment of the world became still more favourable 
to Dorset when he had been sobered by time and marriage. 
His graceful manners, his brilliant conversation, his soft 
heart, his open hand, were universally praised. No day 
passed, it was said, in which some distressed family had 
not reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his good 
nature, such was the keenness of his wit, that scoffers 
whose sarcasm all the town feared, stood in craven fear of 
the sarcasm of Dorset. All political parties esteemed and 
caressed him; but politics were not much to his taste. 
Had he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would 
probably have risen to the highest posts in the state ; but 
he was born to rank so high and wealth so ample, that 
many of the motives which impel men to engage in pub- 
lic affairs were wanting to him. He took just so much 
part in parliamentary and diplomatic business as sufficed 
to show that he wanted nothing but inclination to rival 
Danby and Sunderland, and turned away to pursuits which 
pleased him better. Like many other men who, with great 
natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indo- 
lent, he became an intellectual voluptuary, and a master 
of all those pleasing branches of knowledge which can be 
acquired without severe application. He was allowed to 
be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of architecture, 
of acting, that the court could show. On questions of 
polite learning, his decisions were regarded at all the 



CHABLES SACKYILLE, EAKL OF DOBSET. 181 

coffee-liouses as without appeal. More than one clever 
play which had failed on the first representation was sup- 
ported by his single authority against the whole clamour 
of the pit, and came forth successful from the second trial. 
The delicacy of his taste in French composition was ex- 
tolled by Saint Evremond and La Fontaine. Such a pa- 
tron of letters England had never seen. His bounty was 
bestowed with equal judgirent and liberality, and was 
confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged 
from each other by literary jealousy or by difference of po- 
litical opinion, joined in acknowledging his impartial 
kindness. Dryden owned that he had been saved from 
ruin by Dorset's princely generosity. Yet Montague and 
Prior, who had keenly satirized Dryden, were introduced 
by Dorset into public life ; and the best comedy of Dry- 
den's mortal enemy, Shadwell, was written at Dorset's 
country seat. The munificent earl might, if such had been 
his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was 
content to be the benefactor ; for the verses which he occa- 
sionally composed, unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces 
of a genius which, assiduouly cultivated, would have pro- 
duced something great. In the small volume of his works 
may be found songs which have the easy vigour of Suck- 
ling, and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid 
as that of Butler.* 

* Pepys's Diary ; Prior's dedication of his poems to the Duke of 
Dorset ; Dryden's Essay on Satire, and Dedication of the Essay on 
Dramatic Poesy. The affection of Dorset for his wife, and his strict 
fidelity to her, are mentioned with great contempt by that profligate 
coxcomb Sir George Etherege, in his letters from Ratisbon, Dec. 9 — 
19, 1687, and Jan. 16—26, 1688 ; Shadwell's Dedication of the 
Squire of Alsatia ; Burnet, i. 264: ; Mackay's Characters. Some 
parts of Dorset's character are well touched in this epitaph, written 
by Pope : — 

" Yet soft his nature, though severe his lay; * 

and again : — 

" Bless'd courtier, who could king and country please, 
Yet sacred keep his friendships and his ease." 



182 macatjlay's miscella^otjs writings. 



WILLIAM WILLIAMS, SOLICITOR GENERAL. 

No barrister living had opposed the court with more viru- 
lence than William Williams. He had distinguished him- 
self in the late reign as a Whig and an Exclusionist. 
When faction was at the height, he had been chosen 
speaker of the House of Commons. After the prorogation 
of the Oxford Parliament, he had commonly been counsel 
for the most noisy demagogues who had been accused of 
sedition. He was allowed to possess considerable parts 
and knowledge. His chief faults were supposed to be 
rashness and party spirit. It was not yet suspected that 
he had faults compared with which rashness and party 
spirit might well pass for virtues. The government sought 
occasion against hira, and easily found it. He had pub- 
lished, by order of the House of Commons, a narrative 
which Dangerfield had written. This narrative, if pub- 
lished by a private man, would undoubtedly have been a 
seditious libel. A criminal information was filed in the 
King's Bench against Williams : he pleaded the privileges 
of Parliament in vain ; he was convicted, and sentenced 
to a fine of ten thousand pounds. A large part of this 
sum he actually paid ; for the rest, he gave a bond. The 
Earl of Peterborough, who had been injuriously mentioned 
in Dangerfield' s narrative, was encouraged by the success 
of the criminal information, to bring a civil action, and to 
demand large damages. Williams was driven to extrem- 
ity. At this juncture a way of escape presented itself. 
It was, indeed, a way which, to a man of strong princi- 
ples or high spirit, would have been more dreadful than 
beggary, imprisonment, or death. He might sell himself 
to that government of which he had been the enemy and 
the victim. He might offer to go on the forlorn hope in 
every assault on those liberties and on that religion for 
which he had professed an inordinate zeal. He might ex- 
piate his Whiggism by performing services from which 
bigotted Tories, stained with the blood of Russell and 
Sidney, shrank in horror. The bargain was struck. The 
debt still due to the crown was remitted. Peterborough 



HENRY SIDNEY, BROTHER OF ALGERNON. 183 

was induced, by royal mediation, to compromise his ac- 
tion. Sawyer was dismissed. Powis became attorney 
general. Williams was made solicitor, received the hon- 
our of knighthood, and was soon a favourite. Though in 
rank he was only the second law officer of the crown, his 
abilities, learning, and energy, were such that he com- 
pletely threw his superior into the shade.* 



HENET SIDNEY, BROTHER OF ALGERNON. 

It is remarkable that both Edward Russell and Henry 
Sidney had been in the household of James, that both 
had, partly on public and partly on private grounds, be- 
come his enemies, and that both had, to avenge the blood 
of near kinsmen who had, in the same year, fallen vic- 
tims to his implacable severity. Here the resemblance 
ends. Russell, with considerable abilities, was proud, 
acrimonious, restless, and violent. Sidney, with a sweet 
temper and winning manners, seemed to be deficient in 
capacity and knowledge, and to be sunk in voluptuousness 
and indolence. His face and form were eminently hand- 
some. In his youth he had been the terror of husbands ; 
and even now, at near fifty, he was the favourite of women 
and the envy of younger men. He had formerly resided 
at the Hague in a public character, and had then succeed- 
ed in obtaining a large share of William's confidence. 
Many wondered at this ; for it seemed that between the 
most austere of statesmen and the most dissolute of idlers 
there could be nothing in common. Swift, many years 
later, could not be convinced that one whom he had known 
only as an illiterate and frivolous old rake could really 
have played a great part in a great revolution. Yet a less 
acute observer than Swift might have been aware that 

* London Gazette, Dec. 15, 1687. See the proceedings against 
Williams in the Collection of State Trials. " Ha hecho," says Kon- 
quillo, " grande susto el haber nombrado el abogado Williams, que 
fue el orador y el mas arrabiado de toda la cassa des comunes en los 
tiltimos terribles parlamentos del Key difunto." — Nov. 27— Dec. 7, 1687 



184 macatjlay's miscellaneous writings. 

there is a certain tact, resembling an instinct, which is 
often wanting to great orators and philosophers, and which 
is often found in persons who, if judged by their conver- 
sation or by their writings, would be pronounced simple- 
tons. Indeed, when a man possesses this tact, it is in 
some sense an advantage to him that he is destitute of 
those more showy talents which would make him an ob- 
ject of admiration, of envy, and of fear. Sidney was a 
remarkable instance of this truth. Incapable, ignorant, 
and dissipated as he seemed to be, he understood, or rather 
felt, with whom it was necessary to be reserved, and with 
whom he might safely venture to be communicative. The 
consequence was, that he did what Mordaunt, with all his 
vivacity and invention, or Burnet, with all his multifarious 
knowledge and fluid elocution, never could have done.* 



SCHOMBERG. 



The prince had already fixed upon a general well quali- 
fied to be second in command. This was indeed no light 
matter. A random shot or the dagger of an assassin 
might in a moment leave the expedition without a head. 
It was necessary that a successor should be ready to fill 
the vacant place ; yet it was impossible to make choice of 
any Englishman without giving offence either to the 
Whigs or to the Tories ; nor had any Englishman then 
living shown that he possessed the military skill necessary 
for the conduct of a campaign. On the other hand, it 
was not easy to assign pre-eminence to a foreigner without 
wounding the national sensibility of the haughty island- 
ers. One man there was, and only one in Europe, to 
whom no objection could be found, Frederic, count ot 
Schomberg, a German, sprung from a noble house of the 
Palatinate. He was generally esteemed the greatest liv 
ing master of the art of war. His rectitude and piety, 

* Sidney's Diary and Correspondence, edited by Mr. Blencowe; 
Mackay's Memoirs with Swift's Note ; Burnet, i. 763. 



JOHN LOED LOVELACE. 185 

tried by strong temptations and never found wanting, 
commanded general respect and confidence. Though a 
Protestant, he had been, during many years, in the service 
of Louis, and had, in spite of the ill offices of the Jesuits, 
extorted from his employer, by a series of great actions, 
the staff of a marshal of France. When persecution be- 
gan to rage, the brave veteran steadfastly refused to pur- 
chase the royal favour by apostasy, resigned, without one 
murmur, all his honours and commands, quitted his 
adopted country forever, and took refuge at the court of 
Berlin. He had passed his seventieth year ; but both his 
mind and his body were still in full vigour. He had been 
in England, and was much loved and honoured there. 
He had, indeed, a recommendation of which very few for- 
eigners could then boast ; for he spoke our language, not 
only intelligibly, but with grace and purity. He was, 
with the consent of the Elector of Brandenburg, and with 
the warm approbation of the chiefs of the English parties, 
appointed William's lieutenant* 



JOHN LOED LOVELACE. 

Men of higher consequence had already set out from dif- 
ferent parts of the country for Exeter. The first of these 
was John Lord Lovelace, distinguished by his taste, by 
his magnificence, and by the audacious and intemperate 
vehemence of his Whiggism. He had been five or six 
times arrested for political offences. The last crime laid 
to his charge was, that he had contemptuously denied the 
validity of a warrant signed by a Eoman Catholic justice 
of the peace. He had been brought before the Privy 
Council and strictly examined, but to little purpose. He 
resolutely refused to criminate himself; and the evidence 
against him was insufficient. He was dismissed; but, 
before he retired, James exclaimed, in great heat, "My 

t Abrege de la Vie de Frederic Due de Scliomberg, 1690 ; Sidney 
to William, June 30, 1688 ; Burnet, i. 677. 



186 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

lord, this is not the first trick that you have played me." 
"Sir/' answered Lovelace, with undaunted spirit, "I 
never played a trick to your majesty, or to any other per- 
son. Whoever has accused me to your majesty of play- 
ing tricks, is a liar." Lovelace had subsequently been 
admitted into the confidence of those who planned the 
Kevolution.* His mansion, built by his ancestors out of 
the spoils of Spanish galleons from the Indies, rose on the 
ruins of a house of Our Lady in that beautiful valley 
through which the Thames, not yet defiled by the pre- 
cincts of a great capital, nor rising and falling with the 
flow and ebb of the sea, rolls under woods of beech round 
the gentle hills of Berkshire. Beneath the stately saloon, 
adorned by Italian pencils, was a subterraneous vault, in 
which the bones of ancient monks had sometimes been 
found. In this dark chamber some zealous and daring 
opponents of the government had held many midnight 
conferences during that anxious time when England was 
impatiently expecting the Protestant wind.| The season 
for action had now arrived. Lovelace, with seventy fol- 
lowers, well armed and mounted, quitted his dwelling, and 
directed his course westward. He reached Gloucester- 
shire without difficulty. But Beaufort, who governed that 
county, was exerting all his great authority and influence 
in support of the crown. The militia had been called 
out. A strong party had been posted at Cirencester. 
When Lovelace arrived there, he was informed that he 
could not be suffered to pass. It was necessary for him 
either to relinquish his undertaking, or to fight his way 
through. He resolved to force a passage ; and his friends 
and tenants stood gallantly by him. A sharp conflict took 
place. The militia lost an officer and six or seven men ; 
but at length the followers of Lovelace were overpowered : 
he was made a prisoner, and sent to Gloucester Castle.J 

* Johnstone, Feb. 27, 1688 ; Citters of the same date. 

f Lysons, Magna Britannia, Berkshire. 

J London Gazette, Nov. 15, 1688 ; Lnttrell's Diary. 



ANTONI^E, COUNT OF LAUZtTtf. 187 



ANTONINE, COUNT OF LAUZUN. 

It was not very easy to find an Englishman of rank and 
honour who would undertake to place the heir apparent of 
the English crown in the hands of the king of France. 
In these circumstances, James bethought him of a French 
nobleman who then resided in London, Antonine, count of 
Lauzun. Of this man it has been said that his life was 
stranger than the dreams of other people. Early in life 
he had been the intimate associate of Louis, and had been 
encouraged to expect the highest employments under the 
French crown. Then his fortunes had undergone an 
eclipse. Louis had driven from him the friend of his 
youth with bitter reproaches, and had, it was said, scarcely 
refrained from adding blows. The fallen favourite had 
been sent prisoner to a fortress ; but he had emerged from 
his confinement, had again enjoyed the smiles of his mas- 
ter, and had gained the heart of one of the greatest ladies 
in Europe, Anna Maria, daughter of Gaston, duke of 
Orleans, grand-daughter of King Henry the Fourth, and 
heiress of the immense domains of the house of Montpen- 
sier. The lovers were bent on marriage. The royal con- 
sent was obtained. During a few hours, Lauzun was re- 
garded by the court as an adopted member of the house of 
Bourbon. The portion which the princess brought with 
her might well have been an object of competition to sov- 
ereigns ; three great dukedoms, an independent principal- 
ity, with its own mint and with its own tribunals, and an 
income greatly exceeding the whole revenue of the king- 
dom of Scotland. But this splendid prospect had been 
overcast. The match had been broken off. The aspiring 
suitor had been, during many years, shut up in an Alpine 
castle. At length Louis relented. Lauzun was forbidden 
to appear in the royal presence, but was allowed to enjoy 
liberty at a distance from the court. He visited England, 
and was well received at the palace of James and in the 
fashionable circles of London ; for in that age the gentle- 
men of France were regarded throughout Europe as mod- 
els of grace ; and many chevaliers and viscounts, who had 



188 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

never been admitted to the interior circle at Versailles, 
found themselves objects of general curiosity and admira- 
tion at Whitehall. Lauzun was in every respect the man 
for the present emergency. He had courage and a sense 
of honour, had been accustomed to eccentric adventures, 
and, with the keen observation and ironical pleasantry of a 
finished man of the world, had a strong propensity to 
knight errantry. All his national feelings and all his 
personal interests impelled him to undertake the adven- 
ture from which the most devoted subjects of the English 
crown seemed to shrink. As the guardian, at a perilous 
crisis, of the Queen of Great Britain and of the Prince of 
Wales, he might return with honour to his native land ; 
he might once more be admitted to see Louis dress and 
dine, and might, after so many vicissitudes, recommence, 
in the decline of life, the strangely fascinating chase of 
royal favour. 



THE FIEST MINISTEY OF WILLIAM III. 

The internal government of England could be carried on 
only by the advice and agency of English ministers. 
Those ministers William selected in such a manner as 
showed that he was determined not to proscribe any set of 
men who were willing to support his throne. On the day 
after the crown had been presented to him in the Ban- 
queting House, the Privy Council was sworn in. Most of 
the Councillors were Whigs ; but the names of several 
eminent Tories appeared in the list.* The four highest 
offices in the state were assigned to four noblemen, the 
representatives of four classes of politicians. 

In practical ability and official experience Danby had 
no superior among his contemporaries. To the gratitude 
of the new Sovereigns he had a strong claim ; for it was 
by his dexterity that their marriage had been brought 
about in spite of difficulties which had seemed insuper- 
able. The enmity which he had always borne to France, 

* London Gazette, Feb. 18, 1688-9. 



THE FIRST MINISTRY OF WILLIAK III. 189 

was a scarcely less powerful recommendation. He had 
signed the invitation of the thirtieth of June, had excited 
and directed the northern insurrection, and had, in the 
Convention, exerted all his influence and eloquence in op- 
position to the scheme of Kegency. Yet the Whigs re- 
garded him with unconquerable distrust and aversion. 
They could not forget that he had, in evil days, been the 
first minister of the state, the head of the Cavaliers, the 
champion of prerogative, the persecutor of dissenters. 
Even in becoming a rebel, he had not ceased to be a Tory. 
If he had drawn the sword against the Crown, he had 
drawn it only in defence of the Church. If he had, in 
the Convention, done good by opposing the scheme of Ke- 
gency, he had done harm by obstinately maintaining that 
the throne was not vacant, and that the Estates had no 
right to determine who should fill it. The Whigs were 
therefore of opinion that he ought to think himself amply 
rewarded for his recent merits, by being suffered to escape 
the punishment of those offences for which he had been 
impeached ten years before. He, on the other hand, esti- 
mated his own abilities and services, which were doubtless 
considerable, at their full value, and thought himself enti- 
tled to the great place of Lord High Treasurer, which he 
had formerly held. But he was disappointed. William, 
on principle, thought it desirable to divide the power and 
patronage of the Treasury among several Commissioners. 
He was the first English King who never, from the begin- 
ning to the end of his reign, trusted the white staff in the 
hands of a single subject. Danby was offered his choice 
between the Presidency of the Council and a Secretary- 
ship of State. He sullenly accepted the Presidency, and, 
while the Whigs murmured at seeing him placed so high, 
hardly attempted to conceal his anger at not having been 
placed higher.* 

Halifax, the most illustrious man of that small party 
which boasted that it kept the balance even between Whigs 
and Tories, took charge of the Privy Seal, and continued 
to be Speaker of the House of Lords.f He had been fore- 

* London Gazette, Feb. 18, 1688-9 ; Sir J. Reresby's Memoirs. 
f London Gazette, Feb. 18, 1688-9 ; Lords' Journals. 



190 macattlay's miscellaneous wettings. 

most in strictly legal opposition to the late Government, 
and had spoken and written with great ability against the 
dispensing power : but he had refused to know any thing 
about the design of invasion : he had laboured, even when 
the Dutch were in full march towards London, to effect a, 
reconciliation ; and he had never deserted James till James 
had deserted the throne. But, from the moment of that 
shameful flight, the sagacious Trimmer, convinced that 
compromise was thenceforth impossible, had taken a de- 
cided part. He had distinguished himself pre-eminent- 
ly in the Convention ; nor was it without a peculiar pro- 
priety that he had been appointed to the honourable office 
of tendering the crown, in the name of all the Estates of 
England, to the Prince and Princess of Orange ; for our 
Eevolution, as far as it can be said to bear the character 
of any single mind, assuredly bears the character of the 
large yet cautious mind of Halifax. The Whigs, however, 
were not in a temper to accept a recent service as an 
atonement for an old offence ; and the offence of Halifax 
had been grave indeed. He had long before been con- 
spicuous in their front rank during a hard fight for liberty. 
When they were at length victorious, when it seemed that 
Whitehall was at their mercy, when they had a near pros- 
pect of dominion and revenge, he had changed sides ; and 
fortune had changed sides with him. In the great debate 
on the Exclusion Bill, his eloquence had struck them 
dumb, and had put new life into the inert and desponding 
party of the Court. It was true that, though he had left 
them in the day of their insolent prosperity, he had re- . 
turned to them in the day of their distress. But, now 
that their distress was over, they forgot that he had re- 
turned to them, and remembered only that he had left 
them.* 

The vexation with which they saw Danby presiding in 
the Council, and Halifax bearing the Privy Seal, was not 
diminished by the news that Nottingham was appointed 
Secretary of State. Some of those zealous churchmen 
who had never ceased to profess the doctrine of non-resist- 
ance, who thought the Eevolution unjustifiable, who had 

* Burnet, ii. 4. 



THE FIRST MINISTRY OF WILLIAM in. 191 

voted for a Begency, and who had to the last maintained 
that the English throne could never be one moment vacant, 
yet conceived it to be their duty to submit to the decision 
of the Convention. They had not, they said, rebelled 
against James. They had not selected William. But, 
now that they saw on the throne a Sovereign whom they 
never would have placed there, they were of opinion that 
no law, divine or human, bound them to carry the contest 
further. They thought that they found, both in the Bible 
and in the Statute Book, directions which could not be 
misunderstood. The Bible enjoins obedience to the powers 
that be. The Statute Book contains an act providing that 
no subject shall be deemed a wrongdoer for adhering to 
the King in possession. On these grounds many, who had 
not concurred in setting up the new government, believed 
that they might give it their support without offence to 
God or man. One of the most eminent politicians of this 
school was Nottingham. At his instance the Convention 
had, before the throne was filled, made such changes in 
the oath of allegiance as enabled him and those who 
agreed with him, to take that oath without scruple. " My 
principles," he said, " do not permit me to bear any part 
in making a King. But when a King has been made, my 
principles bind me to pay him an obedience more strict 
than he can expect from those who have made him." He 
now, to the surprise of some of those who most esteemed 
him, consented to sit in the council, and to accept the seals 
of Secretary. William doubtless hoped that this appoint- 
ment would be considered by the clergy and the Tory 
country gentlemen as a sufficient guarantee that no evil 
was meditated against the Church. Even Burnet, who at 
a later period felt a strong antipathy to Nottingham, 
owned, in some memoirs written soon after the Bevolution, 
that the King had judged well ; and that the influence of 
the Tory Secretary, honestly exerted in support of the new 
Sovereigns, had saved England from great calamities.* 

* These Memoirs will be found in a manuscript volume, which is 
part of the Harleian Collection, and is numbered 6584. They are, 
in fact, the first outlines of a great part of Burnet's History of His 
Own Times. The dates at which the different portions of this most 
curious and interesting book were composed are marked. Almost the 



192 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

The other Secretary was Shrewsbury.* No man so 
young had within living memory occupied so high a post 
in the government. He had but just completed his twen- 
ty-eighth year. Nobody, however, except the solemn for- 
malists at the Spanish embassy, thought his youth an ob- 
jection to his promotion.! He had already secured for 
himself a place in history by the conspicuous part which 
he had taken in the deliverance of his country. His tal- 
ents, his accomplishments, his graceful manners, his bland 
temper, made him generally popular. By the Whigs es- 
pecially he was almost adored. None suspected that, with 
many great and many amiable qualities, he had such faults 
both of head and of heart, as would make the rest of a 
life, which had opened under the fairest auspices, burden- 
some to himself and almost useless to his country. 



UNPOPULAKITY OF WILLIAM III. 

Unhappily, sarcasm and invective directed against William 
were but too likely to find favourable audience. Each of 
the two great parties had its own reasons for being dissat- 
isfied with him ; and there were some complaints in which 
both parties joined. His manners gave almost universal 
offence. He was, in truth, far better qualified to save a 

whole was written before the death of Mary. Burnet did not begin 
to prepare his History of William's reign for the press till ten years 
later. By that time his opinions, both of men and of things, had un- 
dergone great changes. The value of the rough draught is therefore 
very great : for it contains some facts which he afterwards thought it 
advisable to suppress, and some judgments which he afterwards saw 
cause to alter. I must own that I generally like his first thoughts 
best. Whenever his History is reprinted, it ought to be carefully 
collated with this volume. 

When I refer to the Burnet MS. Harl. 6584, I wish the reader to 
understand that the MS. contains something which is not to be found 
in the History. 

As to Nottingham's appointment, see Burnet, ii. 8 ; the London 
Gazette of March 7, 1688-9 ; and Clarendon's Diary of Feb. 15. 

* London Gazette, Feb. 18, 1688-9. 

f Don Pedro de Ronquillo makes this objection. 



UNPOPULARITY OF WILLIAM III. 193 

nation than to adorn a court. In the highest parts of 
statesmanship, he had no equal among his contempora- 
ries. He had formed plans not inferior in grandeur and 
boldness to those of Kiehelieu, and had carried them into 
effect with a tact and wariness worthy of Mazarin. Two 
countries, the seats of civil liberty and of the Eeformed 
Faith, had been preserved by his wisdom and courage 
from extreme perils. Holland he had delivered from for- 
eign, and England from domestic foes. Obstacles appa- 
rently insurmountable had been interposed between him 
and the ends on which he was intent ; and those obstacles 
his genius had turned into stepping-stones. Under his 
dexterous management the hereditary enemies of his house 
had helped him to mount a throne ; and the persecutors of 
his religion had helped him to rescue his religion from 
persecution. Fleets and armies, collected to withstand 
him, had, without a struggle, submitted to his orders. 
Factions and sects, divided by mortal antipathies, had re- 
cognized him as their common head. Without carnage, 
without devastation, he had won a victory compared with 
which all the victories of Gustavus and Turenne were in- 
significant. In a few weeks he had changed the relative 
position of all the states in Europe, and had restored the 
equilibrium which the preponderance of one power had 
destroyed. Foreign nations did ample justice to his great 
qualities. In every Continental country where Protestant 
congregations met, fervent thanks were offered to God, 
who, from among the progeny of His servants, Maurice, 
the deliverer of Germany, and William, the deliverer of 
Holland, had raised up a third deliverer, the wisest and 
mightiest of all. At Vienna, at Madrid, nay, at Eome, 
the valiant and sagacious heretic was held in honour as 
the chief of the great confederacy against the house of 
Bourbon; and even at Versailles the hatred which he 
inspired was largely mingled with admiration. 

Here he was less favourably judged. In truth, our 
ancestors saw him in the worst of all lights. By the 
French, the Germans, and the Italians, he was contem- 
plated at such a distance that only what was great could 
be discerned, and that small blemishes were invisible. To 
the Dutch he was brought close : but he was himself a 
9 



194 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 

Dutchman. In his intercourse with them he was seen to 
the best advantage : he was perfectly at his ease with them ; 
and from among them he had chosen his earliest and dear- 
est friends. But to the English he appeared in a most 
unfortunate point of view. He was at once too near to 
them and too far from them. He lived among them, so 
that the smallest peculiarity of temper or manner could 
not escape their notice. Yet he lived apart from them, 
and was to the last a foreigner in speech, tastes, and 
habits. 

One of the chief functions of our Sovereigns had long 
been to preside over the society of the capital. That func- 
tion Charles the Second had performed with immense suc- 
cess. His easy bow, his good stories, his style of dancing 
and playing tennis, the sound of his cordial laugh, were 
familiar to all London. One day he was seen among the 
elms of Saint James's Park, chatting with Dry den about 
poetry.* Another day his arm was on Tom Durfey's 
shoulder ; and his majesty was taking a second, while his 
companion sang "Phillida, Phillida," or "To horse, brave 
boys, to Newmarket, to horse." f James, with much less 
vivacity and good nature, was accessible, and, to people 
who did not cross him, civil. But of this sociableness 
William was entirely destitute. He seldom came forth 
from his closet; and, when he appeared in the public 
rooms, he stood among the crowd of courtiers and ladies, 
stern and abstracted, making no jest and smiling at none. 
His freezing look, his silence, the dry and concise answers 
which he uttered when he could keep silence no longer, 
disgusted noblemen and gentlemen who had been accus- 
tomed to be slapped on the back by their royal masters, 
called Jack or Harry, congratulated about race cups or 
rallied about actresses. The women missed the homage 
due to their sex. They observed that the king spoke in a 
somewhat imperious tone even to the wife to whom he owed 
so much, and whom he sincerely loved and esteemed. £ 

* See the account given in Spence's Anecdotes of the Origin of 
Dryden's Medal. 

f Guardian No. 67. 

X There is abundant proof that William, though a very affection- 
ate, was not always a polite husband. But no credit is duo to the 



UNPOPULARITY OF WILLIAM in. 195 

They were amused and shocked to see him, when the 
Princess Anne dined with him, and when the first green 
peas of the year were put on the table, devour the whole 
dish without offering a spoonful to her Royal Highness ; 
and they pronounced that this great soldier and politician 
was no better than a Low Dutch bear.* 

One misfortune which was imputed to him as a crime, 
was his bad English. He spoke our language, but not 
well. His accent was foreign : his diction was inelegant ; 
and his vocabulary seems to have been no larger than was 
necessary for the transaction of business. To the difficul- 
ty which he felt in expressing himself, and to his con- 
sciousness that his pronunciation was bad, must be partly 
ascribed the taciturnity and the short answers which gave 
so much offence. Our literature he was incapable of en- 
joying or of understanding. He never once, during his 
whole reign, showed himself at the theatre.f The poets 
who wrote Pindaric verses in his praise complained that 
their flights of sublimity were beyond his comprehension.!: 
Those who are acquainted with the panegyrical odes of 
that age, will perhaps be of opinion that he did not lose 
much by his ignorance. 

story contained in the letter which Daltymple was foolish enough to 
publish as Nottingham's in 1773, and wise enough to omit in the edi- 
tion of 1790. How any person who knew any thing of the history 
of those times could be so strangely deceived, it is not easy to under- 
stand, particularly as the handwriting bears no resemblance to Not- 
tingham's, with which Dalrymple was familiar. The letter is evi- 
dently a common newsletter, written by a scribbler, who had never 
seen the King and Queen except at some public place, and whoso 
anecdotes of their private life rested on no better authority than cof- 
feehouse gossip. 

* Ronquillo ; Burnet, ii. 2 ; Duchess of Marlborough's Vindica- 
tion. In a pastoral dialogue between Philander and Palsemon, pub- 
lished in 1691, the dislike with which women of fashion regarded 
William is mentioned. Philander says : 

" But man methinks his reason should recall, 
Nor let frail woman work his second fall." 

\ Tutchin's Observator of November 16, 1706. 

j Prior, who was treated by William with much kindness, and 
who was very grateful for it, informs us that the king did not under- 
stand poetical eulogy. The passage is in a highly curious manuscript, 
the property of Lord Lansdowne. 



196 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 



POPULAEITT OF MAKY II. 

It is true that his wife did her best to supply what was 
wanting, and that she was excellently qualified to be the 
head of the Court. She was English by birth, and Eng- 
lish also in her tastes and feelings. -Her face was hand- 
some, her port majestic, her temper sweet and lively, her 
manners affable and graceful. Her understanding, though 
very imperfectly cultivated, was quick. There was no 
want of feminine wit and shrewdness in her conversation ; 
and her letters were so well expressed, that they deserved 
to be well spelt. She took much pleasure in the lighter 
kinds of literature, and did something towards bringing 
books into fashion among ladies of quality. The stainless 
purity of her private life, and the strict attention which 
she paid to her religious duties, were the more respectable, 
because she was singularly free from censoriousness, and 
discouraged scandal as much as vice. In dislike of back- 
biting, indeed, she and her husband cordially agreed ; but 
they showed their dislike in different and in very charac- 
teristic ways. William preserved profound silence, and 
gave the talebearer a look which, as was said by a person 
who had once encountered it, and who took good care 
never to encounter it again, made your story go back down 
your throat.* Mary had a way of interrupting tat- 
tle about elopements, duels, and playdebts, by asking the 

* Memoires originaux sur le regne et la cour de Frederic L, Roi 
de Prusse, ecrits par Christophe Comte de Dohna. Berlin, 1833. It 
is strange that this interesting volume should be almost unknown in 
England. The only copy that I have ever seen of it was kindly given 
to me by Sir Robert Adair. " Le Roi," Dohna says, " avoit une autre 
qualite tres estimable, qui est celle de n'aimer point qu'on rendit de 
mauvais offices a personne pardes railleries." The Marquis de la Foret 
tried to entertain his Majesty at the expense of an English nobleman. 
" Ce prince," says Dohna, " prit son air severe, et, le regardant sans 
mot dire, lui fit rentrer les paroles dans le ventre. Le Marquis m'en 
fit ses plaintes quelques heures apres. ( J'ai mal pris ma bisque,' dit 
il; 'j'ai cru faire l'agreable sur le chapitre de Milord . . . mais j'ai 
trouve a qui parler, et j'ai attrap6 un regard du roi qui m'a fait passer 
l'envie de rire.' " Dohna supposed that William might be less sensitive 
about the character of a Frenchman, and tried the experiment. But, 
says he, " j'eus a peu pres le meme sort que M. d'e la Foret." 



POPULAKITY OF MATEY II. 197 

tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had 
ever read her favourite sermon, Doctor Tillotson's on Evil 
Speaking. Her charities were munificent and judicious ; 
and, though she made no ostentatious display of them, it 
was known that she retrenched from her own state in order 
to relieve Protestants whom persecution had driven from 
France and Ireland, and who were starving in the garrets 
of London. So amiable was her conduct, that she was 
generally spoken of with esteem and tenderness by the 
most respectable of those who disapproved of the manner 
in which she had been raised to the throne, and even of 
those who refused to acknowledge her as Queen. In the 
Jacobite lampoons of that time, lampoons which, in viru- 
lence and malignity, far exceed any thing that our age 
has produced, she was not often mentioned with severity. 
Indeed, she sometimes expressed her surprise at finding 
that libellers who respected nothing else, respected her 
name. God, she said, knew where her weakness lay. She 
was too sensitive to abuse and calumny ; He had merci- 
fully spared her a trial which was beyond her strength ; 
and the best return which she could make to Him was to 
discountenance all malicious reflections on the characters 
of others. Assured that she possessed her husband's en- 
tire confidence and affection, she turned the edge of his 
sharp speeches sometimes by soft and sometimes by play- 
ful answers, and employed all the influence which she de- 
rived from her many pleasing qualities to gain the hearts 
of the people for him.* 

* Compare the account of Mary by the "Whig Burnet with the 
mention of her by the Tory Evelyn in his Diary, March 8, 1694-5, 
and with what is said of her by the Nonjuror who wrote the Letter to 
Archbishop Tennison on her death in 1695. The impression which 
the bluntness and reserve of William and the grace and gentleness of 
Mary had made on the populace may be traced in the remains of the 
street poetry of that time. The following conjugal dialogue may still 
be seen on the original broadside. , 

" Then bespoke Mary, our most royal Queen, 
4 My gracious King' William, where are you going? ' 
He answered her quickly, ' I count him no man 
That telleth his secret unto a woman. 1 
The Queen with a modest behaviour replied, 
1 1 wish that kind Providence may be thy guide, 
To keep thee from danger, my sovereign Lord, 
The which will the greatest of comfort afford.' " 

These lines are in an excellent collection formed by Mr. Kichard 



198 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WKITTNGS. 

If she had long continued to assemble round her the 
best society of London, it is probable that her kindness 
and courtesy would have done much to efface the unfavour- 
able impression made by his stern and frigid demeanour. 



BUKNET, BISHOP OF SALISBUKY. 

Seth Ward, who had, during many years, had charge of 
the diocese of Salisbury, and who had been honourably 
distinguished as one of the founders of the Eoyal Society, 
having long survived his faculties, died while the country 
was agitated by the elections for the Convention, without 
knowing that great events, of which not the least impor- 
tant had passed under his own roof, had saved his Church 
and his country from ruin. The choice of a successor was 
no light matter. That choice would inevitably be consid- 
ered by the country as a prognostic of the highest import. 
The king too might well be perplexed by the number of 
divines whose erudition, eloquence, courage, and upright- 
ness had been conspicuously displayed during the conten- 
tions of the last three years. The preference was given 
to Burnet. His claims were doubtless great. Yet Wil- 
liam might have had a more tranquil reign if he had post- 
poned for a time the well-earned promotion of his chap- 
lain, and had bestowed the first great spiritual preferment, 
which, after the Eevolution, fell to the disposal of the. 
Crown, on some eminent theologian, attached to the new 
settlement, yet not generally hated by the clergy. Un- 
happily, the name ol Burnet was odious to the great ma- 
jority of the Anglican priesthood. Though, as respected 
doctrine, he by no means belonged to the extreme section 
of the Latitudinarian party, he was popularly regarded as 
the personification of the Latitudinarian spirit. This dis- 

Heber, and now the property of Mr. Broderip, by whom it was kindly 
lent to me. In one of the most savage Jacobite pasquinades of 1689, 
William is described as 

"A churlo to his wife, which she makes but a jest. 11 



BURNET, BISHOP OF SALISBURY. 19-0 

iinction he owed to the prominent place which he held in 
literature and politics, to the readiness of his tongue and 
of bis pen, and above all to the frankness and boldness of 
his nature, frankness which could keep no secret, and bold- 
ness which flinched from no danger. He had formed but 
a low estimate of the character of his clerical brethren, 
considered as a body ; and, with his usual indiscretion, he 
frequently suffered his opinion to escape him. They hated 
him in return with a hatred which has descended to their 
successors, and which, after the lapse of a century and a 
half, does not appear to languish. 

As soon as the King's decision was known, the ques- 
tion was every where asked, What will the Archbishop 
do 1 Sancroft had absented himself from the Convention : 
he had refused to sit in the Privy Council : he had ceased 
to confirm, to ordain, and to institute ; and he was seldom 
seen out of the Avails of his palace at Lambeth. He, on 
all occasions, professed to think himself still bound by his 
old oath of allegiance. Burnet he regarded as a scandal 
to the priesthood, a Presbyterian in a surplice. The pre- 
late who should lay hands on that unworthy head, would 
commit more than one great sin. He would, in a sacred 
place, and before a great congregation of the faithful, at 
once acknowledge an usurper as a King, and confer on a 
schismatic the character of a Bishop. During some time 
Sancroft positively declared that he would not obey the 
precept of William. Lloyd, of Saint Asaph, who was the 
common friend of the Archbishop and of the Bishop elect, 
intreated and expostulated in vain. Nottingham, who, of 
all the laymen connected with the new government, stood 
best with the clergy, tried his influence, but to no better 
purpose. The Jacobites said every where that they were 
sure of the good old Primate : that he had the spirit of a 
martyr ; that he was determined to brave, in the cause of 
the Monarchy and of the Church, the utmost rigour of 
those laws with which the obsequious parliaments of the 
sixteenth century had fenced the Koyal Supremacy. He 
did in truth hold out long. But at the last moment his 
heart failed him, and he looked round him for some mode 
of escape. Fortunately, as childish scruples often dis- 
turbed his conscience, childish expedients often quieted it. 



200 macaulay's miscellaneous wettings. 

A more childish expedient than that to which he now re- 
sorted is not to be found in all the tomes of the casuists. 
He would not himself bear a part in the service. He 
would not publicly pray for the Prince and Princess as 
King and Queen. He would not call for their mandate, 
order it to be read, and then proceed to obey it. But he 
issued a commission empowering any three of his suffra- 
gans to commit, in his name and as his delegates, the sins 
which he did not choose to commit in person. The re- 
proaches of all parties soon made him ashamed of himself. 
He then tried to suppress the evidence of his fault by 
means more discreditable than the fault itself. He ab- 
stracted from among the public records of which he was 
the guardian the instrument by which he had authorized 
his brethren to act for him, and was with difficulty induced 
to give it up.* 

Burnet however had, under the authority of this in- 
strument, been consecrated. When he next waited on 
Mary, she reminded him of the conversations which they 
had held at the Hague about the high duties and grave 
responsibility of Bishops. " I hope," she said, " that you 
will put your notions in practice." Her hope was not dis- 
appointed. Whatever may be thought of Burnet's opin- 
ions touching civil and ecclesiastical polity, or of the tem- 
per and judgment which he showed in defending those 
opinions, the utmost malevolence of faction could not ven- 
ture to deny that he tended his flock with a zeal, dili- 
gence, and disinterestedness worthy of the purest ages of 
the Church. His jurisdiction extended over Wiltshire and 
Berkshire. These counties he divided into districts, which 
he sedulously visited. About two months of every sum- 
mer he passed in preaching, catechizing, and confirming 
daily from church to church. When he died there was no 
corner of his diocese in which the people had not had 
seven or eight opportunities of receiving his instructions 
and of asking his advice. The worst weather, the worst 
roads, did not prevent him from discharging these duties. 
On one occasion, when the floods were out, he exposed his 
life to imminent risk rather than disappoint a rural con- 

* Burnet, ii. 8 ; Birch's Life of Tillotson ; Life of Kettlewell, part 
iii. section 62. 



BUKXET, BISHOP OF SALISBURY. 201 

gregation which was in expectation of a discourse from 
the Bishop. The poverty of the inferior clergy was a con- 
stant cause of uneasiness to his kind and generous heart. 
He was indefatigable and at length successful in his at- 
tempts to obtain for them from the Crown that grant 
which is known by the name of Queen Anne's Bounty.* 
He was especially careful, when he travelled through his 
diocese, to lay no burden on them. Instead of requiring 
them to entertain him, he entertained them. He always 
fixed his headquarters at a market town, kept a table 
there, and, by his decent hospitality and munificent chari- 
ties, tried to conciliate those who were prejudiced against 
his doctrines. When he bestowed a poor benefice, and he 
had many such to bestow, his practice was to add out of 
his own purse twenty pounds a year to the income. Ten 
promising young men, to each of whom he allowed thirty 
pounds a year, studied divinity under his own eye in the 
close of Salisbury. He had several children : but he did 
not think himself justified in hoarding for them. Their 
mother had brought him a good fortune. With that for- 
tune, he always said they must be content. He would 
not, for their sakes, be guilty of the crime of raising an 
estate out of revenues sacred to piety and charity. Such 
merits as these will, in the judgment of wise and candid 
men, appear fully to atone for every offence which can be 
justly imputed to him.f 

* Swift, writing under the name of Gregory Misosaram, most ma- 
lignantly and dishonestly represents Burnet as grudging this grant to 
the Church. Swift cannot have been ignorant that the Church was 
indebted for the grant chiefly to Burnet's persevering exertions. 

f See the Life of Burnet, at the end of the second volume of his 
history, his manuscript memoirs, Harl. 6584:, his memorials touching 
the First Fruits and Tenths, and Somers's letter to him on that sub- 
ject. See also what Dr. King, Jacobite as he was, had the justice to 
say in his Anecdotes. A most honourable testimony to Burnet's vir- 
tues, given by another Jacobite who had attacked him fiercely, and 
whom he had treated generously, the learned and upright Thomas 
Baker, will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for August and 
September, 1791. 

9* 



202 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 



THE COUNT OF AVAUX. 

The Count of Avaux, whose sagacity had detected all 
the plans of William, and who had vainly recommended 
a policy which would probably have frustrated them, was 
the man on whom the choice of Lewis fell. In abilities, 
Avaux had no superior among the numerous able diplo- 
matists whom his country then possessed. His demeanour 
was singularly pleasing, his person handsome, his temper 
bland. His manners and conversation were those of a gen- 
tleman who had been bred in the most polite and magnifi- 
cent of all Courts, who had represented that Court both 
in Eoman Catholic and in Protestant countries, and who 
had acquired in his wanderings the art of catching the 
tone of any society into which chance might throw him. 
He was eminently vigilant and adroit, fertile in resources, 
and skilful in discovering the weak parts of a character. 
His own character, however, was not without its weak 
parts. The consciousness that he was of plebeian origin 
was the torment of his life. He pined for nobility with a 
pining at once pitiable and ludicrous. Able, experienced 
and accomplished as he was, he sometimes, under the in- 
fluence of this mental disease, descended to the level of 
Moliere's Jour dam, and entertained malicious observers 
with scenes almost as laughable as that in which the hon- 
est draper was made a Mamamouchi.* It would have been 
well if this had been the worst. But it is not too much 
to say, that of the difference betwen right and wrong, 
Avaux had no more notion than a brute. One sentiment 
was to him in the place of religion and morality, a super- 
stitious and intolerant devotion to the Crown which he 
served. This sentiment pervades all his despatches, and 
gives a colour to all his thoughts and words. Nothing 
that tended to promote the interests of the French mon- 
archy seemed to him a crime. Indeed, he appears to have 
taken it for granted, that not only Frenchmen, but all 

* See Saint Simon's account of the trick by which Avaux tried to 
pass himself off at Stockholm as a Knight of the Order of the Holy 
Ghost. 



CETTELTY OF EOSEX AT LONDONDEKET. 203 

human beings, owed a natural allegiance to the house of 
Bourbon, and that whoever hesitated to sacrifice the hap- 
piness and freedom of his own native country to the glory 
of that House, was a traitor. While he resided at the 
Hague, he always designated those Dutchmen who had 
sold themselves to France, as the well-intentioned party. 
In the letters which he wrote from Ireland, the same feel- 
ing appears still more strongly. He would have been a 
more sagacious politician if he had sympathized more with 
those feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation 
which prevail among the vulgar. For his own indifference 
to all considerations of justice and mercy was such that, 
in his schemes, he made no allowance for the consciences 
and sensibilities of his neighbours. More than once he 
deliberately recommended wickedness so horrible that 
wicked men recoiled from it with indignation. But they 
could not succeed even in making their scruples intelligi- 
ble to him. To every remonstrance he listened with a 
cynical sneer, wondering within himself whether those 
who lectured him were such fools as they professed to be, 
or were only shamming. 

Such was the man whom Lewis selected to be the com- 
panion and monitor of James. 



CEUELTY OF EOSEX AT THE SIEGE OF LON- 
DONDEEEY. 

It had been resolved that Eosen should take the chief 
command. He was now sent down with all speed.* 

On the nineteenth of June he arrived at the head- 
quarters of the besieging army. At first he attempted to 
undermine the walls ; but his plan was discovered ; and 
he was compelled to abandon it after a sharp fight, in 
which more than a hundred of his men were slain. Then 
his fury rose to a strange pitch. He, an old soldier, a 
Marshal of France in expectancy, trained in the school 

* Avaux, June 16 (26), 1689. 



204 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

of the greatest generals, accustomed, during many years, 
to scientific war, to be baffled by a mob of country gentle- 
men, farmers, shopkeepers, who were protected only by a 
wall which any good engineer would at once have pro- 
nounced untenable ! He raved, he blasphemed, in a lan- 
guage of his own, made up of all the dialects spoken from 
the Baltic to the Atlantic. He would raze the city to 
the ground; he would spare no living thing; no, not 
the young girls ; not the babies at the breast. As to the 
leaders, death was too light a punishment for them : he 
would rack them : he would roast them alive. In his 
rage he ordered a shell to be flung into the town with a 
letter containing a horrible menace. He would, he said, 
gather into one body all the Protestants who had remained 
at their homes between Charlemont and the sea, old men, 
women, children, many of them near in blood and affec- 
tion to the defenders of Londonderry. ISTo protection, 
whatever might be the authority by which it had been 
given, should be respected. The multitude thus brought 
together should be driven under the walls of Londonderry, 
and should there be starved to death in the sight of their 
countrymen, their friends, their kinsmen. This was no 
idle threat. Parties were instantly sent out in all direc- 
tions to collect victims. At dawn, on the morning of the 
second of July, hundreds of Protestants, who were charged 
with no crime, who were incapable of bearing arms, and 
many of whom had protections granted by James, were 
dragged to the gates of the city. It was imagined that 
the piteous sight would quell the spirit of the colonists. 
But the only effect was to rouse that spirit to still greater 
energy. An order was immediately put forth that no man 
should utter the word Surrender on pain of death ; and no 
man uttered that word. Several prisoners of high rank 
were in the town. Hitherto they had been well treated, 
and had received as good rations as were measured out to 
the garrison. They were now closely confined. A gal- 
lows was erected on one of the bastions ; and a message 
was conveyed to Eosen, requesting him to send a confessor 
instantly to prepare his friends for death. The prisoners, 
in great dismay, wrote to the savage Livonian, but received 
no answer. They then addressed themselves to their 



SIR JAMES DALRYMPLE. 205 

countryman, Kichard Hamilton. They were willing, they 
said, to shed their blood for their King ; but they thought 
it hard to die the ignominious death of thieves in conse- 
quence of the barbarity of their own companions in arms. 
Hamilton, though a man of lax principles, was not cruel. 
He had been disgusted by the inhumanity of Kosen, but, 
being only second in command, could not venture to ex- 
press publicly all that he thought. He hcwever remon- 
strated strongly. Some Irish officers felt on this occasion 
as it was natural that brave men should feel, and declared, 
weeping with pity and indignation, that they should never 
cease to have in their ears the cries of the poor women and 
children who had been driven at the point of the pike to 
die of famine between the camp and the city. Kosen per- 
sisted during forty-eight hours. In that time many un- 
happy creatures perished : but Londonderry held out as 
resolutely as ever ; and he saw that his crime was likely 
to produce nothing but hatred and obloquy. He at length 
gave way, and suffered the survivors to withdraw. The 
garrison then took down the gallows which had been 
erected on the bastion.* 



SIR JAMES DALRYMPLE. 

The person by whose advice William appears to have been 
at this time chiefly guided as to Scotch politics, was a 
Scotchman of great abilities and attainments, Sir James 
Dalrymple of Stair, the founder of a family eminently dis- 
tinguished at the bar, on the bench, in the senate, in 
diplomacy, in arms, and in letters, but distinguished also 
by misfortunes and misdeeds which have furnished poets 
and novelists with materials for the darkest and most 
heart-rending tales. Already Sir James had been in 
mourning for more than one strange and terrible death. 

* Walker ; Mackenzie ; Light to the Blind ; King, iii. 13 ; I es- 
lie's Answer to King ; Life of James, ii. 366. I ought to say that on 
this occasion King is unjust to James. 



206 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

One of his sons had died by poison. One of his daugh- 
ters had poniarded her bridegroom on the wedding night. 
One of his grandsons had in boyish sport been slain by 
another. Savage libellers asserted, and some of the su- 
perstitious vulgar believed, that calamities so portentous 
were the consequences of some connection between the un- 
happy race and the powers of darkness. Sir James had 
a wry neck ; and he was reproached with this misfortune 
as if it had been a crime, and was told that it marked him 
out as a man doomed to the gallows. His wife, a woman 
of great ability, art, and spirit, was popularly nicknamed 
the Witch of Endor. It was gravely said that she had 
cast fearful spells on those whom she hated, and that she 
had been seen in the likeness of a cat seated on the cloth 
of state by the side of the Lord High Commissioner. 
The man, however, over whose roof so many curses ap- 
peared to hang, did not, as far as we can now judge, fall 
short of that very low standard of morality which was 
generally attained by politicians of his age and nation. 
In force of mind and extent of knowledge he was superior 
to them all. In his youth he had borne arms : he had 
been a professor of philosophy : he had then studied law, 
and had become, by general acknowledgment, the greatest 
jurist that his country had produced. In the days of the 
Protectorate, he had been a judge. After the Eestoration, 
he had made his peace with the royal family, had sate in 
the Privy Council, and had presided with unrivalled abil- 
ity in the Court of Session. He had doubtless borne a 
share in many unjustifiable acts ; but there were limits 
which he never passed. He had a wonderful power of 
giving to any proposition which it suited him to maintain, 
a plausible aspect of legality and even of justice ; and 
this power ho frequently abused. But he was not, like 
many of those among whom he lived, impudently and un- 
scrupulously servile. Shame or conscience generally re- 
strained him from committing any bad action for which 
his rare ingenuity could not frame a specious defence ; and 
he was seldom in his place at the council board when any 
thing outrageously unjust or cruel was to be done. His 
moderation at length gave offence to the Court. He was 
deprived of his high office, and found himself in so dis- 



SIR JAMES DALRYMPLE. 20 7 

agreeable a situation that he retired to Holland. There 
he employed himself in correcting the great work on juris- 
prudence which has preserved his memory fresh down to 
our own time. In his banishment he tried to gain the 
favour of his fellow exiles, who naturally regarded him 
. with suspicion. He protested, and perhaps with truth, 
that his hands were pure from the blood of the persecuted 
Covenanters. He made a high profession of religion, 
prayed much, and observed weekly days of fasting and 
humiliation. He even consented, after much hesitation, 
to assist with his advice and his credit the unfortunate en- 
terprise of Argyle. When that enterprise had failed, a 
prosecution w T as instituted at Edinburgh against Dalrym- 
ple ; and his estates would doubtless have been confiscated, 
had they not been saved by an artifice which subsequently 
became common among the politicians of Scotland. His 
eldest son and heir apparent, John, took the side of the 
government, supported the dispensing power, declared 
against the Test, and accepted the place of Lord Advo- 
cate, when Sir George Mackenzie, after holding out through 
ten years of foul drudgery, at length showed signs of flag- 
ging. The services of the younger Dalrymple were re- 
warded by a remission of the forfeiture which the offences 
of the elder had incurred. Those services indeed were not 
to be despised. For Sir John, though inferior to his father 
in depth and extent of legal learning, was no common 
man. His knowledge was great and various : his parts 
were quick ; and his eloquence was singularly ready and 
graceful. To sanctity he made no pretensions. Indeed, 
Episcopalians and Presbyterians agreed in regarding him 
as little better than an atheist. During some months, Sir 
John at Edinburgh affected to condemn the disloyalty of 
his unhappy parent Sir James ; and Sir James at Leyden 
told his Puritan friends how deepy he lamented the wicked 
compliances of his unhappy child, Sir John. 

The Eevolution came, and brought a large increase of 
wealth and honours to the house of Stair. The son 
promptly changed sides, and co-operated ably and zeal- 
ously with the father. Sir James established himself in 
London, for the purpose of giving advice to William on 
Scotch affairs. Sir John's post was in the Parliament 



208 MACAULAT'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

House, at Edinburgh. He was npt likely to find any 
equal among the debaters there, and* was prepared to exert 
all his powers against the dynasty which he had latelj 
served* 



LOUD MELVILLE. 

By the large party which was zealous for the Calvinistie 
church government, John Dalrymple was regarded with 
incurable distrust and dislike. It was therefore necessary 
that another agent should be employed to manage that 
party. Such an agent was George Melville, Lord Mel- 
ville, a nobleman connected by affinity with the unfortu- 
nate Monmouth, and with that Leslie who had unsuccess- 
fully commanded the Scotch army against Cromwell at 
Dunbar. Melville had always been accounted a Whig and 
a Presbyterian. Those who speak of him most favourably 
have not ventured to ascribe to him eminent intellectual 
endowments or exalted public spirit. But he appears from 
his letters to have been by no means deficient in that 
homely prudence the want of which has often been fatal to 
men of brighter genius and of purer virtue. That pru- 
dence had restrained him from going very far in opposition 
to the tyranny of the Stuarts : but he had listened while 
his friends talked about resistance, and therefore, when 
the Eye House plot was discovered, thought it expedient 
to retire to the Continent. In his absence he was accused 
of treason, and was convicted on evidence which would 
not have satisfied any impartial tribunal. He was con- 
demned to death: his honours and lands were declared 

* As to the Dalrymples, see the Lord President's own writings, and 
among them his Vindication of the Divine Perfections ; Wodrow's 
Analecta ; Douglas's Peerage ; Lockhart's Memoirs ; the Satyre on 
the Familie of Stairs ; the Satyric Lines upon the long wished for and 
timely Death of the Right Honourable Lady Stairs ; Law's Memorials ; 
and the Hyndford Papers, written in 1704-5 and printed with the 
Letters of Carstairs. Lockhart, though a mortal enemy of John Dal- 
rymple, says, " There was none in the parliament capable to take up 
the cudgels with him." 



CARSTAIRS. 209 

forfeit: his arms were torn with contumely out of the 
Heralds' book ; and his domains swelled the estate of the 
cruel and rapacious Perth. The fugitive meanwhile, with 
characteristic wariness, lived quietly on the Continent, and 
discountenanced the unhappy projects of his kinsman 
Monmouth, but cordially approved of the enterprise of the 
Prince of Orange. 

Illness had prevented Melville from sailing with the 
Dutch expedition : but he arrived in London a few hours 
after the new Sovereigns had been proclaimed there. 
William instantly sent him down to Edinburgh, in the 
hope, as it should seem, that the Presbyterians would be 
disposed to listen to moderate counsels proceeding from a 
man who was attached to their cause, and who had suffered 
for it. Melville's second son, David, who had inherited, 
through his mother, the title of Earl of Leven, and who 
had acquired some military experience in the service of 
the Elector of Brandenburg, had the honour of being the 
bearer of a letter from the new King of England to the 
Scottish Convention.* 



CARSTAIKS. 



William had, however, one Scottish adviser who deserved 
and possessed more influence than any of the ostensible 
ministers. This was Carstairs, one of the most remark- 
able men of that age. He united great scholastic attain- 
ments with great aptitude for civil business, and the firm 
faith and ardent zeal of a martyr with the shrewdness and 
suppleness of a consummate politician. In courage and 
fidelity he resembled Burnet ; but he had, what Burnet 
wanted, judgment, self-command, and a singular power of 
keeping secrets. There was no post to which he might 
not have aspired if he had been a layman, or a priest of 

* As to Melville, see the Leven and Melville Papers, passim, and 
the preface ; the Act. Pari. Scot. June 16, 1685 ; and the Appendix, 
June 13 ; Burnet, h\ 24 ; and the Burnet MS. Harh 6584* 



210 macaulay's miscellaneous whitings. 

the Church of England. But a Presbyterian clergyman 
could not hope to attain any high dignity either in the 
north or in the south of the island. Car stairs was forced 
to content himself with the substance of power, and to 
leave the semblance to others. He was named Chaplain 
to their Majesties for Scotland ; but wherever the King 
was, in England, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, there 
was this most trusty and most prudent of courtiers. He 
obtained from the royal bounty a modest competence ; and 
he desired no more. But it was well known that he could 
be as useful a friend and as formidable an enemy as any 
member of the cabinet ; and he was designated at the 
public offices and in the antechambers of the palace by 
the significant nickname of the Cardinal.* 



THE MAEQUESS OF KUVIGNY. 

Four regiments, one of cavalry and three of infantry, had 
been formed out of the French refugees, many of whom 
had borne arms with credit. No person did more to pro- 
mote the raising of these regiments than the Marquess of 
Kuvigny. He had been during many years an eminently 
faithful and useful servant of the French government. So 
highly was his merit appreciated at Versailles, that he 
had been solicited to accept indulgences which scarcely 
any other heretic could by any solicitation obtain. Had 
he chosen to remain in his native country, he and his 
household would have been permitted to worship God pri- 
vately according to their own forms. But Kuvigny re- 
jected all offers, cast in his lot with his brethren, and, at 
upwards of eighty years of age, quitted Versailles, where 
he might still have been a favourite, for a modest dwelling 

* See the Life and Correspondence of Carstairs, and the interesting 
memorials of him in the Caldwell Papers, printed 1854. See also 
Mackay's character of him, and Swift's note. Swift's word is not to 
be taken against a Scotchman and a Presbyterian. I believe, how- 
ever, that Carstairs, though an honest and pious man in essentials, had 
his full share of the wisdom of the serpent. 



THE DUKE OF SCHOMBEEG. 211 

at Greenwich. That dwelling was, during the last months 
of his life, the resort of all that was most distinguished 
among his fellow exiles. His abilities, his experience, and 
his munificent kindness, made him the undisputed chief of 
the refugees. He was at the same time half an English- 
man : for his sister had been Countess of Southampton, 
and he was uncle of Lady Kussell. He was long past the 
time of action. But his two sons, both men of eminent 
courage, devoted their swords to the service of William. 
The younger son, who bore the name of Caillemote, was 
appointed colonel of one of the Huguenot regiments of 
foot. 



THE DUKE OF SCHOMBEEG. 

The general to whom the direction of the expedition 
against Ireland was confided, had wonderfully succeeded 
in obtaining the affection and esteem of the English na- 
tion. He had been made a Duke, a Knight of the Gar- 
ter, and Master of the Ordnance : he was now placed at 
the head of an army : and yet his elevation excited none 
of that jealousy which showed itself as often as any mark 
of royal favour was bestowed on Bentinck, on Zulestein, 
or on Auverquerque. Schomberg's military skill was uni- 
versally acknowledged. He was regarded by all Protes- 
tants as a confessor who had endured every thing short of 
martyrdom for the truth. For his religion he had re- 
signed a splendid income, had laid down the truncheon of 
a Marshal of France, and had, at near eighty years of 
age, begun the world again as a needy soldier of fortune. 
As he had no connection with the United Provinces, and 
had never belonged to the little Court of the Hague, the 
preference given to him over English captains was justly 
ascribed, not to national or personal partiality, but to his 
virtues and his abilities. His deportment differed widely 
from that of the other foreigners who had just been cre- 
ated English peers. They, with many respectable quali- 
ties, were, in tastes, manners, and predilections, Dutch- 



212 macatjlay's miscellaneous writings. 

men, and could not catch the tone of the society to which 
they had been transferred. He was a citizen of the world, 
had travelled over all Europe, had commanded armies on 
the Meuse, on the Ebro, and on the Tagus, had shone in 
the splendid circle of Versailles, and had been in high 
favour at the court of Berlin. He had often been taken 
by French noblemen for a French nobleman. He had 
passed some time in England, spoke English remarkably 
well, accommodated himself easily to English manners, 
and was often seen walking in the park with English com- 
panions. In youth his habits had been temperate ; and 
his temperance had its proper reward, a singularly green 
and vigorous old age. At fourscore he retained a strong 
relish for innocent pleasures: he conversed with great 
courtesy and sprightliness : nothing could be in better 
taste than his equipages and his table ; and every cornet 
of cavalry envied the grace and dignity with which the 
veteran appeared in Hyde Park on his charger at the head 
of his regiment.* 

The House of Commons had, with general approba- 
tion, compensated his losses and rewarded his services by 
a grant of a hundred thousand pounds. Before he set out 
for Ireland, he requested permission to express his grati- 
tude for this magnificent present. A chair was set for 
him within the bar. He took his seat there with the mace 
at his right hand, rose, and in a few graceful words re- 
turned his thanks, and took his leave. The Speaker re- 
plied that the Commons could never forget the obligation 
under which they already lay to His Grace, that they saw 
him with pleasure at the head of an English army, that 
they felt entire confidence in his zeal and ability, and that, 
at whatever distance he might be, he would always be in 
a peculiar manner an object of their care. The precedent 
set on this interesting occasion was followed with the 
utmost minuteness, a hundred and twenty-five years later, 
on an occasion more interesting still. Exactly on the 
same spot on which, in July, 1689, Schomberg had ac- 
knowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair was set, 

* See the Abrege de la Vie de Frederic due de Schomberg by Lu- 
zancy, 1690, the Memoirs of Count Dohna, and the note of Saint Si- 
mon on Dangeau's Journal, July 30, 1690. 



ADMIRAL TOERIXGTON. 213 

in July, 1814, for a still more illustrious warrior, who 
came to return thanks for a still more splendid mark of 
public gratitude. Few things illustrate more strikingly 
the peculiar character of the English government and 
people than the circumstance that the House of Commons, 
a popular assembly, should, even in a moment of joyous 
enthusiasm, have adhered to ancient forms with the punc- 
tilious accuracy of a College of Heralds ; that the sitting 
and rising, the covering and the uncovering, should have 
been regulated by exactly the same etiquette in the nine- 
teenth century as in the seventeenth ; and that the same 
mace which had been held at the right hand of Schom- 
berg, should have been held in the same position at the 
right hand of Wellington.* 



ADMIEAL TOKKINGTON. 

We cannot justly blame William for having a high opin- 
ion of Torrington. For Torrington was generally regard- 
ed as one of the bravest and most skilful officers in the 
navy. He had been promoted to the rank of Kear Admi- 
ral of England by James, who, if he understood any 
thing, understood maritime affairs. That place and other 
lucrative places Torrington had relinquished when he 
found that he could retain them only by submitting to be 
a tool of the Jesuitical cabal. No man had taken a more 
active, a more hazardous, or a more useful part in effecting 
the Kevolution. It seemed, therefore, that no man had 
fairer pretensions to be put at the head of the naval ad- 
ministration. Yet no man could be more unfit for such a 
post. His morals had always been loose, so loose, indeed, 
that the firmness with which in the late reign he had 
adhered to his religion had excited much surprise. His 
glorious disgrace indeed seemed to have produced a salu- 
tary effect on his character. In poverty and exile he rose 

* See the Commons' Journals of July 16, 1689, and of July 1, 
1814. 



214 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

from a voluptuary into a hero. But, as soon as prosperity 
returned, the hero sank again into a voluptuary ; and the 
lapse was deep and hopeless. The nerves of his mind, 
which had been during a short time braced to a firm tone, 
were now so much relaxed by vice, that he was utterly in-^ 
capable of self-denial or of strenuous exertion. The vul- 
gar courage of a foremast man he still retained. But 
both as Admiral and as First Lord of the Admiralty, he 
was utterly inefficient. Month after month the fleet which 
should have been the terror of the seas, lay in harbour 
while he was diverting himself in London. The sailors, 
punning upon his new title, gave him the name of Lord 
Tarry-in-town. When he came on shipboard he was ac- 
companied by a bevy of courtesans. There was scarcely 
an hour of the day or of the night when he was not under 
the influence of claret. Being insatiable of pleasure, he 
necessarily became insatiable of wealth. Yet he loved flat- 
tery almost as much as either wealth or pleasure. He had 
long been in the habit of exacting the most abject hom- 
age from those who were under his command. His flag- 
ship was a little Versailles. He expected his captains to 
attend him to his cabin when he went to bed, and to 
assemble every morning at his levee. He even suffered 
them to dress him. One of them combed his flowing wig ; 
another stood ready with the embroidered coat. Under 
such a chief there could be no discipline. His tars passed 
their time in rioting among the rabble of Portsmouth. 
Those officers who won his favour by servility and adula- 
tion, easily obtained leave of absence, and spent weeks in 
London, revelling in taverns, scouring the streets, or mak- 
ing love to the masked ladies in the pit of the theatre. 
The victuallers soon found out with whom they had to 
deal, and sent down to the fleet casks of meat which 
dogs would not touch, and barrels of beer which smelt 
worse than bilge water. Meanwhile the British Channel 
seemed to be abandoned to French rovers. Our mer- 
chantmen were boarded in sight of the ramparts of Ply- 
mouth. The sugar fleet from the West Indies lost seven 
ships. The whole value of the prizes taken by the cruis- 
ers of the enemy in the immediate neighbourhood of our 
island, while Torrington was engaged with his bottle and 



AVAEICE OF MARLBOROUGH. 215 

his harem, was estimated at six hundred thousand pounds. 
So difficult was it to obtain the convoy of a man of war, 
except by giving immense bribes, that our traders were 
forced to hire the services of Dutch privateers, and found 
these foreign mercenaries much more useful and much less 
greedy than the officers of our own royal navy.* 



AVAKICE OF MAKLBOROUGH. 

The Jacobites, however, discovered in the events of the 
campaign abundant matter for invective. Marlborough 
was, not without reason, the object of their bitterest 
hatred. In his behaviour on a field of battle, malice itself 
could find little to censure : but there were other parts of 
his conduct which presented a fair mark for obloquy. 
Avarice is rarely the vice of a young man : it is rarely 
the vice of a great man : but Marlborough was one of the 
few who have, in the bloom of youth, loved lucre more 
than wine or women, and who have, at the height of 
greatness, loved lucre more than power or fame. All the 
precious gifts which nature had lavished on him he valued 
chiefly for what they would fetch. At twenty he made 
money of his beauty and his vigour. At sixty he made 
money of his genius and his glory. The applauses which 
were justly due to his conduct at Walcourt, could not alto- 
gether drown the voices of those who muttered that, 
wherever a broad piece was to be saved or got, this hero 
was a mere Euclio, a mere Harpagon ; that, though he 
drew a large allowance under pretence of keeping a public 
table, he never asked an officer to dinner ; that his muster 
rolls were fraudulently made up ; that he pocketed pay in 
the names of men who had long been dead, of men who 
had been killed in his own sight four years before at Sedg- 

* Commons* Jour., Nov. 1,-23, 1689 ; Grey's Debates, Nov. 13, 
14, 18, 23, 1689. See, among numerous pasquinades, the Parable of 
the Bearbaiting, Reformation of Manners, a Satire, the Mock Mourn- 
ers, a Satire. See also Pepys's Diary, kept at Tangier, Oct. 15, 1683. 



216 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

moor ; that there were twenty such names in one troop ; 
that there were thirty-six in another. Nothing but the 
union of dauntless courage and commanding powers of 
mind, with a bland temper and winning manners, could 
have enabled him to gain and keep, in spite of faults emi- 
nently unsoldierlike, the good-will of his soldiers.* 



KEN, BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS. 

Ken, who, both in intellectual and in moral qualities, 
ranked highest among the nonjuring prelates, hesitated 
long. There were few clergymen who could have submit- 
ted to the new government with a better grace. For, in 
the times when non-resistance and passive obedience were 
the favourite themes of his brethren, he had scarcely ^ver 
alluded to politics in the pulpit. He owned that the argu- 
ments in favour of swearing were very strong. He went, 
indeed, so far as to say, that his scruples would be com- 
pletely removed if he could be convinced that James had 
entered into engagements for ceding Ireland to the French 
King. It is evident, therefore, that the difference between 
Ken and the Whigs was not a difference of principle. He 
thought, with them, that misgovernment carried to a cer- 
tain point, justified a transfer of allegiance, and doubted 
only whether the misgovernment of James had been car- 
ried quite to that point. Nay, the good Bishop actually 
began to prepare a pastoral letter explaining his reasons 
for taking the oaths. But, before it was finished, he re- 
ceived information which convinced him that Ireland had 
not been made over to France : doubts came thick upon 
him : he threw his unfinished letter into the fire, and im- 
plored his less scrupulous friends not to urge him further. 
He wa's sure, he said, that they had acted uprightly : he 

* See the Dear Bargain, a Jacobite pamphlet clandestinely printed 
in 1690. "I have not patience," says the writer, " after this wretch 
(Marlborough) to mention any other. All are innocent comparatively, 
even Kirke himself." 



KEX, BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS. 21? 

was glad that they could do with a clear conscience what 
he shrank from doing : he felt the force of their reasoning : 
he was all but persuaded ; and he was afraid to listen 
longer lest he should be quite persuaded : for, if he should 
comply, and his misgivings should afterwards return, he 
should be the most miserable of men. ]Mot for wealth, 
not for a palace, not for a peerage, would he run the small- 
est risk of ever feeling the torments of remorse. It is a 
curious fact that, of the seven nonjuring prelates, the only 
one whose name carries with it much weight was on the 
point of swearing, and was prevented from doing so, as he 
himself acknowledged, not by the force of reason, but by 
a morbid scrupulosity which he did not advise others to 
imitate.* 

Among the priests who refused the oaths, were some 
men eminent in the learned world, as grammarians, chro- 
nologists, canonists, and antiquaries, and a very few who 
were distinguished by wit and eloquence : but scarcely one 
can be named who was qualified to discuss any large ques- 

* See Turner's Letter to Sancroft, dated on Ascension Day, 1689. 
The original is among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library. But 
the letter will be found, with much other curious matter, in the Life 
of Ken, by a Layman, lately published. See also the Life of Kettle- 
well, iii. 95 ; and Ken's letter to Burnet, dated Oct. 5, 1689, in Haw- 
kins's Life of Ken. " I am sure," Lady -Russell wrote to Dr. Fitzwil- 
liam, " the Bishop of Bath and Wells excited others to comply, when 
he could not bring himself to do so, but rejoiced when others did.'* 
Ken declared that he had advised nobody to take the oaths, and that 
his practice had been to remit those who asked his advice to their 
own studies and prayers. Lady Russell's assertion and Ken's denial 
will be found to come nearly to the same thing, when we make those 
allowances which ought to be made for situation and feeling, even in 
weighing the testimony of the most veracious witnesses. Ken, hav- 
ing at last determined to cast in his lot with the nonjurors, naturally 
tried to vindicate his consistency as far as he honestly could. Lady 
Russell, wishing to induce her friend to take the oaths, naturally made 
as much of Ken's disposition to compliance as she honestly could. 
She went too far in using the word " excited." On the other hand, it 
is clear that Ken, by remitting those who consulted him to their own 
studies and prayers, gave them to understand that, in his opinion, the 
oath was lawful to those who, after a serious inquiry, thought it law- 
ful. If people had asked him whether they might lawfully commit 
perjury or adultery, he would assuredly have told them, not to consi- 
der the point maturely, and to implore the divine direction, but to ab- 
stain on peril of their souls. 

10 



218 macaulay's MISCELLANEOUS WKITXNGS. 

tion of morals or politics, scarcely one 'whose writings do 
not indicate either extreme feebleness or extreme flighti- 
ness of mind. Those who distrust the judgment of a 
Whig on this point, will probably allow some weight to 
the opinion which was expressed, many years after the 
Eevolution, by a philosopher of whom the Tories are justly 
proud. Johnson, after passing in review the celebrated 
divines who had thought it sinful to swear allegiance to 
William the Third and George the First, pronounced that, 
in the whole body of nonjurors, there was one, and one 
only, who could reason * 



CHAELES LESLIE. 

The nonjuror in whose favour Johnson made this excep- 
tion, was Charles Leslie. Leslie had, before the Eevolu- 
tion, been Chancellor of the diocese of Connor in Ireland. 
He had been forward in opposition to Tyrconnel ; had, as 
a justice of the peace for Monaghan, refused to acknow- 
ledge a papist as Sheriff of that county ; and had been so 
courageous as to send some officers of the Irish army to 

* See the conversation of June 9, 1784, in Boswell's Life of John- 
son, and the note. Bos well, with his usual absurdity, is sure that 
Johnson could not have recollected " that the seven bishops, so justly 
celebrated for their magnanimous resistance to arbitrary power, were 
yet nonjurors ; only five of the seven were nonjurors ; and anybody but 
Boswell would have known that a man may resist arbitrary power, 
and yet not be a good reasoner.* Nay, the resistance which Sancroft 
and the other nonjuring bishops offered to arbitrary power, while they 
continued to hold the doctrine of non-resistance, is the most decisive 
proof that they were incapable of reasoning. It must be remembered 
that they were prepared to take the whole kingly power from James 
and to bestow it on William, with the title of Kegent. Their scruple 
was merely about the word King. 

I am surprised that Johnson should have pronounced William Law 
no reasoner. Law did indeed fall into great errors : but they were er- 
rors against which logic affords no security. In mere dialectical skill 
he had very few superiors. That he was more than once victorious 
over Hoadley no candid Whig will deny. But Law did not belong to 
the generation with which I have now to do. 



DR. WILLIAM SHERLOCK. 219 

prison for marauding. But the doctrine of non-resistance, 
such as it had been taught by Anglican divines in the 
days of the Eye House plot, was immovably fixed in his 
mind. When the state of Ulster became such that a Pro- 
testant who remained there could hardly avoid being either 
a rebel or a martyr, Leslie fled to London. His abilities 
and his connexions were such that he might easily have 
obtained high preferment in the Church of England. But 
he took his place in the front rank of the Jacobite body, 
and remained there steadfastly, through all the dangers 
and vicissitudes of three and thirty troubled years. Though 
constantly engaged in theological controversy with Deists, 
Jews, Socinians, Presbyterians, Papists, and Quakers, he 
found time to be one of the most voluminous political 
writers of his age. Of all the nonjuring clergy, he was 
the best qualified to discuss constitutional questions. For, 
before he had taken orders, he had resided long in the 
Temple, and had been studying English History and law, 
while most of the other chiefs of the schism had been por- 
ing over the Acts of Chalcedon, or seeking for wisdom in 
the Targum of Onkelos.* 

In 1689, however, Leslie was almost unknown in 
England. 



DE. WILLIAM SHEELOCK. 

Among the divines who incurred suspension on the first of 
August in that year, the highest in popular estimation 
was without dispute Doctor William Sherlock. Perhaps 
no single presbyter of the Church of England has ever 
possessed a greater authority over his brethren than be- 
longed to Sherlock at the time of the Eevolution. He 
was not of the first rank among his contemporaries as a 
scholar, as a preacher, as a writer on theology, or as a 
writer on politics ; but in all the four characters he had 
distinguished himself. The perspicuity and liveliness of 
his style have been praised by Prior and Addison. The 

* Ware's History of the Writers of Ireland, continued by Harris. 



220 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

facility and assiduity with which he v/rote are sufficiently 
proved by the bulk and the dates of his works. There 
were indeed among the clergy men of brighter genius and 
men of wider attainments : but during a long period there 
was none who more completely represented the order, none 
who, on all subjects, spoke more precisely the sense of the 
Anglican priesthood, without any taint of Latitudinarian- 
ism, of Puritanism, or of Popery. He had, in the days of 
the Exclusion Bill, when the power of the dissenters was 
very great in Parliament and in the country, written 
strongly against the sin of nonconformity. When the Rye 
House Plot was detected, he had zealously defended, by 
tongue and pen, the doctrine of non-resistance. His ser- 
vices to the cause of episcopacy and monarchy were so 
highly valued, that he was made master of the Temple. 
A pension was also bestowed on him by Charles : but that 
pension James soon took away ; for Sherlock, though he 
held himself bound to pay passive obedience to the civil 
power, held himself equally bound to combat religious 
errors, and was the keenest and most laborious of that host 
of controversialists who, in the day of peril, manfully de- 
fended the Protestant faith. In little more than two years 
he published sixteen treatises, some of them large books, 
against the high pretensions of Rome. Not content with 
the easy victories which he gained over such feeble antag- 
onists as those who were quartered at Clerkenwell and the 
Savoy, he had the courage to measure his strength with no 
less a champion than Bossuet, and came out of the conflict 
without discredit. Nevertheless, Sherlock still continued 
to maintain that no oppression could justify Christians in 
resisting the kingly authority. VvHien the Convention was 
about to meet, he strongly recommended, in a tract which 
was considered as the manifesto of a large part of the 
clergy, that James should be invited to return on such 
conditions as might secure the laws and religion of the 
nation.* The vote which placed William and Mary on the 
throne filled Sherlock with sorrow and anger. He is said 
to have exclaimed, that if the Convention was determined 
on a Revolution, the clergy would find forty thousand good 

* Letter to a member of the Convention, 1689. 



DB. WILLIAM SHERLOCK. 221 

Churchmen to effect a restoration.* Against the new 
oaths he gave his opinion plainly and warmly. He de- 
clared himself at a loss to understand how any honest man 
could doubt that, by the powers that be, St. Paul meant 
legitimate powers, and no others. No name was in 1689 
cited by the Jacobites so proudly and fondly as that of 
Sherlock. Before the end of 1890, that name excited very 
different feelings. 

Sherlock took the oaths, and speedily published, in 
justification of his conduct, a pamphlet entitled, The Case 
of Allegiance to Sovereign Powers Stated. The sensation 
produced by this work was immense. Dryden's Hind and 
Panther had not raised so great an uproar. Halifax's 
Letter to a Dissenter had not called forth so many an- 
swers. The replies to the Doctor, the vindications of the 
Doctor, the pasquinades on the Doctor, would fill a library. 
The clamour redoubled when it was known that the con- 
vert had not only been reappointed Master of the Temple, 
but had accepted the Deanery of St. Paul's which had be- 
come vacant in consequence of the deprivation of Sancroft 
and the promotion of Tillotson. The rage of the nonju- 
rors amounted almost to frenzy. Was it not enough, they 
asked, to desert the true and pure Church, in this her hour 
of sorrow and peril, without also slandering her ? It was 
easy to understand why a greedy, cowardly hypocrite, 
should refuse to take the oaths to the usurper as long as it 
seemed probable that the rightful King would be restored, 
and should make haste to swear after the battle of the 
Boyne. Such tergiversation in times of civil discord was 
nothing new. What was new was that the turn-coat 
should try to throw his own guilt and shame on the Church 
of England, and should proclaim that she had taught him 
to turn against the weak who were in the right, and to 
cringe to the powerful who were in the wrong. Had such 
indeed been her doctrine or her practice in evil days? 
Had she abandoned her Eoyal Martyr in the prison or on 
the scaffold? Had she enjoined her children to pay obe- 
dience to the Pump or to the Protector ? Yet was the 

* Johnson's Notes on the Phcenix Edition of Burnet's Pastoral Let- 
ter, 1692. 



222 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

government of the Eump or of the Protector less entitled 
to be called a settled government than the government of 
William and Mary? Had not the battle of Worcester 
been as great a blow to the hopes of the House of Stuart as 
the battle of the Boyne 1 Had not the chances of a Resto- 
ration seemed as small in 1657 as they could seem to any 
judicious man in 1691? In spite of invectives and sar- 
casms, however, there was Overall's treatise : there were 
the approving votes of the two Convocations ; and it was 
much easier to rail at Sherlock, than to explain away either 
the treatise or the votes. One writer maintained that by 
a thoroughly settled government must have been meant a 
government of which the title was uncontested. Thus, he 
said, the government of the United Provinces became a 
settled government when it was recognized by Spain, and, 
but for that recognition, would never have been a settled 
government to the end of time. Another casuist, some- 
what less austere, pronounced that a government, wrong- 
ful in its origin, might become a settled government after 
the lapse of a century. On the thirteenth of Febru- 
ary, 1789, therefore, and not a day earlier, Englishmen 
would be at liberty to swear allegiance to a government 
sprung from the Revolution. The history of the chosen 
people was ransacked for precedents. Was Eglon's a set- 
tled government when Ehud stabbed him ? Was Joram's 
a settled government when Jehu shot him ? But the lead- 
ing case was that of Athaliah. It was indeed a case which 
furnished the malcontents with many happy and pungent 
allusions ; a kingdom treacherously seized by an usurper 
near in blood to the throne ; the rightful prince long dis- 
possessed; a part of the sacerdotal order true, through 
many disastrous years, to the Royal House ; a counter rev- 
olution at length effected by the High Priest at the head 
of the Levites. Who, it was asked, would dare to blame 
the heroic pontiff who had restored the heir of David? 
Yet was not the government of Athaliah as firmly settled 
as that of the Prince of Orange? Hundreds of pages 
written at this time about the rights of Joash and the bold 
enterprise of Jehoiada are mouldering in the ancient book- 
cases of Oxford and Cambridge. While Sherlock was 
thus fiercely attacked by his old friends, he was not left 



DE. WILLIAM SHERLOCK. 223 

unmolested by his old enemies. Some vehement Whigs, 
among whom Julian Johnson was conspicuous, declared 
that Jacobitism itself was respectable when compared with 
the vile doctrine which had been discovered in the Convo- 
cation Book. That passive obedience was due to Kings, 
was doubtless an absurd and pernicious notion. Yet it 
was impossible not to respect the consistency and fortitude 
of men who thought themselves bound to bear true alle- 
giance, at all hazards, to an unfortunate, a deposed, an 
exiled oppressor. But the theory which Sherlock had 
learned from Overall was unmixed baseness and wicked- 
ness. A cause was to be abandoned, not because it was 
unjust, but because it was unprosperous. Whether James 
had been a tyrant, or had been the father of his people, 
was quite immaterial. If he had won the battle of the 
Boyne we should have been bound as Christians to be his 
slaves. He had lost it ; and we were bound as Christians 
to be his foes. Other Whigs congratulated the proselyte on 
having come, by whatever road, to a right practical conclu- 
sion, but could not refrain from sneering at the history 
which he gave of his conversion. He was, they said, a 
man of eminent learning and abilities. He had studied 
the question of allegiance long and deeply. He had writ- 
ten much about it. Several months had been allowed him 
for reading, prayer and reflection before he incurred sus- 
pension, several months more before he incurred depriva- 
tion. He had formed an opinion for which he had de- 
clared himself ready to suffer martyrdom : he had taught 
that opinion to others ; and he had then changed that 
opinion solely because he had discovered that it had been, 
not refuted, but dogmatically pronounced erroneous by the 
two Convocations more than eighty years before. Surely, 
this was to renounce all liberty of private judgment, and 
to ascribe to the synods of Canterbury and York an infal- 
libility which the Church of England had declared that 
even (Ecumenical Councils could not justly claim. If, it 
was sarcastically said, all our notions of right and wrong, 
in matters of vital importance to the well-being of society, 
are to be suddenly altered by a few lines of manuscript 
found in a corner of the library at Lambeth, it is surely 
much to be wished, for the peace of mind of humble Chris- 



224 macattlay's miscellaneous weitikgs. 

tians, that all the documents to which this sort of author* 
ity belongs should he rummaged out and sent to the press 
as soon as possible : for, unless this be done, we may all, 
like the Doctor when he refused the oaths last year, be 
committing sins in the full persuasion that we are dis- 
charging duties. In truth, it is not easy to believe that 
the Convocation Book furnished Sherlock with any thing 
more than a pretext for doing what he had made up his 
mind to do. The united force of reason and interest had 
doubtless convinced him that his passions and prejudices 
had led him into a great error. That error he determined 
to recant ; and it cost him less to say that his opinion had 
been changed by newly discovered evidence, than that he 
had formed a wrong judgment with all the materials for 
the forming of a right judgment before him. The popu- 
lar belief was that his retractation was the effect of the 
tears, expostulations and reproaches of his wife. The 
lady's spirit was high : her authority in the family was 
great ; and she cared much more about her house and her 
carriage, the plenty of her table and the prospects of her 
children, than about the patriarchal origin of government, 
or the meaning of the word Abdication. She had, it was 
asserted, given her husband no peace by day or by night 
till he had got over his scruples. In letters, fables, songs, 
dialogues without number, her powers of seduction and in- 
timidation were malignantly extolled. She was Xanthippe 
pouring water on the head of Socrates. She was Delilah 
shearing Samson. She was Eve forcing the forbidden 
fruit into Adam's mouth. She was Job's wife, imploring 
her ruined lord, who sate scraping himself among the 
ashes, not to curse and die, but to swear and live. While 
the ballad makers celebrated the victory of Mrs. Sherlock, 
another class of assailants fell on the theological reputa- 
tion of her spouse. Till he took the oaths, he had always 
been considered as the most orthodox of divines. But the 
captious and malignant criticism to which his writings 
were now subjected, would have found heresy in the Ser- 
mon on the Mount ; and he, unfortunately, was rash enough 
to publish, at the very moment when the outcry against 
his political tergiversation was loudest, his thoughts on the 
mystery of the Trinity. It is probable that, at another 



DE. WILLIAM SHERLOCK. 22o 

time, his work would have been hailed by good Church- 
men as a triumphant answer to the Socinians and Sabel- 
lians. But, unhappily, in his zeal against Socinians and 
Sabeilians, he used expressions which might be construed 
into Tritheism. Candid judges would have remembered 
that the true path was closely pressed on the right and on 
the left by error, and that it was scarcely possible to keep 
far enough from clanger on one side, without going very 
close to clanger on the other. But candid judges Sherlock 
was not likely to find among the Jacobites. His old allies 
affirmed that he had incurred all the fearful penalties de- 
nounced in the Athanasian Creed against those who divide 
the substance. Bulky quartos were written to prove that 
he held the existence of three distinct Deities ; and some 
facetious malcontents who troubled themselves very little 
about the Catholic verity, amused the town by lampoons 
in English and Latin on his heterodoxy. " We," said one 
of these jesters, " plight our faith to one King, and call 
one God to attest our promise. We cannot think it 
strange that there should be more than one King to whom 
the Doctor has sworn allegiance, when we consider that 
the Doctor has more Gods than one to swear by." * 



* A list of all the pieces which I have read relating to Sherlock's 
apostacy would fatigue the reader. I will mention a few of different 
kinds. Parkinson's Examination of Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance, 
1691 ; Answer to Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance, hy a London Ap- 
prentice, 1691; The reasons of the new Convert's taking the Oaths 
to the present Government, 1691 ; Utrum borum ? or God's ways of 
disposing of Kingdoms, and some Clergymen's ways of disposing of 
them, 1691; Sherlock and Xanthippe, 1691; Saint Paul's Triumph 
in his Sufferings for Christ, hy Matthew Bryan, LL. D., dedicated Ec- 
clesias sub cruce gementi ; A Word to a wavering Levite ; The Trim- 
ming Court Divine ; Proteus Ecclesiasticus, or Observations on Dr. 

Sh 's late Case of Allegiance ; The Weasil Uncased ; A Whip for 

the Weasil ; the Anti-Weasils. Numerous allusions to Sherlock and 
his wife will be found in the ribald writings of Tom Brown, Tom Dur- 
fey, and Ned Ward. Soe Life of James, ii. 318. Several curious let- 
ters about Sherlock's apostacy are among the Tanner MSS. I will 
give two or three specimens of the rhymes which the Case of Allegiance 
called forth : 

"When Eve the fruit had tasted, 
She to her husband hastened, 
And chiick'd him on the chin-a. 

10* 



226 MACATTLAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 



GEOBGE HICKES. 

A few other nonjurors ought to be particularly noticed. 
High among them in rank was George Hickes, dean of 
Worcester. Of all the Englishmen of his time, he was 
the most versed in the old Teutonic languages ; and his 
knowledge of the early Christian literature was extensive. 
As to his capacity for political discussions, it may be suffi- 
cient to say, that his favourite argument for passive obedi- 
ence was drawn from the story of the Thebau. legion. He 
was the younger brother of that unfortunate John Hickes 
who had been found hidden in the malthouse of Alice 
Lisle. James had, in spite of all solicitations, put both 
John Hickes and Alice Lisle to death. Persons who did 
not know the strength of the Dean's principles, thought 
that he might possibly feel some resentment on this ac- 
count : for he was of no gentle or forgiving temper, and 
could retain during many years a bitter remembrance of 
small injuries. But he was strong in his religious and 
political faith : he reflected that the sufferers were dissent- 
ers ; and he submitted to the will of the Lord's Anointed 
aot only with patience, but with complacency. He be- 
came, indeed, a more loving subject than ever from the 

Dear Bud, quoth she, come taste this fruit ; 
'Twill finely with your palate suit, 
To eat it is no sin-a." 

" As moody Job, in shirtless case, 
With collyilowers all o'er his face, 

Did on the dunghill languish, 
His spouse thus whispers in his ear, 
Swear, hushand, as you love me, swear, 
'Twill ease you of your anguish." 

" At first he had doubt, and therefore did pray 
That heaven would instruct him in the right way, 
Whether Jemmy or William he ought to obey, 
Which nobody can deny. 

14 The pass at the Boyne determin'd that case, 
And precept to Providence then did give place ; 
To change his opinion he thought no disgrace ; 
Which nobody can deny. 

"But this with the Scripture can never agree, 
As by Hosea the eighth and the fourth you may see ; 
*They have set up kings, but yet not by me, 1 
Which nobody can deny." 



JEREMY COLLIER. 227 

time when his brother was hanged, and his brother's bene- 
factress beheaded. While almost all other clergymen, ap- 
palled by the Declaration of Indulgence and by the pro- 
ceedings of the High Commission, were beginning to think 
that they had pushed the doctrine of non-resistance a lit- 
tle too far, he was writing a vindication of his darling 
legend, and trying to convince the troops at Hounslow 
that, if James should be pleased to massacre them all, as 
Maximian had massacred the Theban legion, for refusing 
to commit idolatry, it would be their duty to pile their 
arms, and meekly to receive the crown of martyrdom. To 
do Hickes justice, his whole conduct after the Eevolution 
proved that his servility had sprung neither from fear nor 
from cupidity, but from mere bigotry.* 



JEEEMY COLLIER. 

Jeremy Collier, who was turned out of the preachership 
of the Rolls, was a man of a much higher order. He is 
well entitled to grateful and respectful mention : for to his 
eloquence and courage is to be chiefly ascribed the purifi- 
cation of our lighter literature from that foul taint which 
had been contracted during the Anti-puritan reaction. 
He was, in the full force of the words, a good man. He 
was also a man of eminent abilities, a great master of sar- 
casm, a great master of rhetoric. f His reading, too, 
though undigested, was of immense extent. But his mind 
was narrow : his reasoning, even when he was so fortunate 

* The best notion of Hickes' character will be formed from bis nu- 
merous controversial writings, particularly bis Jovian, written in 1684, 
bis Thebaean Legion no Fable, written in 1687, though not published 
till 1714, and his discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, 1695. 
His literary fame rests on works of a very different kind. 

f Collier's Tracts on the Stage are, on the whole, his best pieces. 
But there is much that is striking in his political pamphlets. His 
" Persuasive to Consideration, tendered to the Royalists, particularly 
those of the Church of England," seems to me one of the best produc- 
tions of the Jacobite press. 



228 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

as to have a good cause to defend, was singularly futile and 
inconclusive ; and his brain was almost turned by pride, 
not personal, but professional. In his view, a priest was 
the highest of human beings, except a bishop. Keverence 
and submission were due from the best and greatest of the 
laity to the least respectable of the clergy. However 
ridiculous a man in holy orders might make himself, it was 
impiety to laugh at him. So nervously sensitive, indeed, 
was Collier on this point, that he thought it profane to 
throw any reflection even on the ministers of false religions. 
He laid it down as a rule that Muftis and Augurs ought 
always to be mentioned with respect. He blamed Dryden 
for sneering at the Hierophants of Apis. He praised Ka- 
cine for giving dignity to the character of a priest of 
Baal. He praised Corneilie for not bringing that learned 
and reverend divine Tiresias on the stage in the tragedy 
of (Edipus. The omission, Collier owned, spoiled the dra- 
matic effect of the piece : but the holy function was much 
too solemn to be played with. Nay, incredible as it may 
seem, he thought it improper in the laity to sneer at Pres- 
byterian preachers. Indeed, his Jacobitism was little more 
than one of the forms in which his zeal for the dignity of 
his profession manifested itself. He abhorred the. Eevolu- 
tion less as a rising up of subjects against their King, than 
as a rising up of the laity against the sacerdotal caste. 
The doctrines which had been proclaimed from the pulpit 
during thirty years, had been treated with contempt by 
the Convention. A new government had been set up in 
opposition to the wishes of the spiritual peers in the House 
of Lords and of the priesthood throughout the country. 
A secular assembly had taken upon itself to pass a law re- 
quiring archbishops and bishops, rectors and vicars, to 
abjure, on pain of deprivation, what they had been teach- 
ing all their lives. Whatever meaner spirits might do, 
Collier was determined not to be led in triumph by the 
victorious enemies of his order. To the last he would con- 
front, with the authoritative port of an ambassador of 
heaven, the anger of the powers and principalities of the 
earth. 



HENBY DODWELL. 229 



HENEY DODWELL. 



In parts, Collier was the first man among the nonjurors. 
In erudition, the first place must be assigned to Henry 
Dodwell, who, for the unpardonable crime of having a 
small estate in Mayo, had been attainted by the Popish 
Parliament at Dublin. He was Camdenian Professor of 
Ancient History in the University of Oxford, and had 
already acquired considerable celebrity by chronological 
and geographical researches ; but, though he never could 
be persuaded to take orders, theology was his favourite 
study. He was doubtless a pious and sincere man. He 
had perused innumerable volumes in various languages, 
and had indeed acquired more learning than his slender 
faculties were able to bear. The small intellectual spark 
which he possessed was put out by the fuel. Some of his 
books seem to have been written in a mad- house, and, 
though filled with proofs of his immense reading, degraded 
him to the level of James Xayior and Ludowick Muggle- 
ton. He began a dissertation intended to prove that the 
law of nations was a divine revelation made to the family 
which was preserved in the ark. He published a treatise 
in which he maintained that a marriage between a mem- 
ber of the Church of England and a dissenter was a nul- 
lity, and that the couple were, in the sight of heaven, 
guilty of adultery. He defended the use of instrumental 
music in public worship on the ground that the notes of the 
organ had a power to counteract the influence of devils on 
the spinal marrow of human beings. In his treatise on 
this subject, he remarked that there was high authority for 
the opinion that the spinal marrow, when decomposed, be- 
came a serpent. Whether this opinion were or were not 
correct, he thought it unnecessary to decide. Perhaps, he 
said, the eminent men in whose works it was found had 
meant only to express figuratively the great truth, that the 
Old Serpent operates on us chiefly through the spinal mar- 
row.* Do dwell' s speculations on the state of human be- 

* See Brokesby's Life of Dodwell. The discourse against Mar- 
riages in different Communions is known to me, I ought to say, only 



230 macaulay's miscellaneous whitings. 

ings after death are, if possible, more extraordinary still. 
He tells us that our souls are naturally mortal. Annihi- 
lation is the fate of the greater part of mankind, of 
heathens, of Mahometans, of unchristian babes. The gift 
of immortality is conveyed in the sacrament of baptism : 
but to the efficacy of the sacrament it is absolutely neces- 
sary that the water be poured, and the words pronounced 
by a priest who has been ordained by a Bishop. In the 
natural course of things, therefore, all Presbyterians, In- 
dependents, Baptists, and Quakers would, like the inferior 
animals, cease to exist. But Dodwell was far too good a 
churchman to let off dissenters so easily. He informs 
them that, as they have had an opportunity of hearing the 
gospel preached, and might, but for their own perverse- 
ness, have received episcopalian baptism, God will, by an 
extraordinary act of power, bestow immortality on them 
in order that they may be tormented for ever and ever.* 

No man abhorred the growing latitudinarianism of 
those times more than Dodwell. Yet no man had more 
reason to rejoice in it. For, in the earlier part of the 
seventeenth century, a speculator who had dared to affirm 
that the human soul is by its nature mortal, and does, in 
the great majority of cases, actually die with the body, 
would have been burned alive in Smithfield. Even in 
days which Dodwell could well remember, such heretics as 
himself would have been thought fortunate if they escaped 
with life, their backs flayed, their ears clipped, their noses 

from Brokesby's copious abstract. That discourse is very rare. It 
was originally printed as a preface to a sermon preached by Leslie. 
When Leslie collected his -works he omitted the discourse, probably be- 
cause he was ashamed of it. The Treatise on the Lawfulness of Instru- 
mental Music I have read ; and incredibly absurd it is. 

u Dodwell tells us that the title of the work in which he first pro- 
mulgated this theory was framed with great care and precision. I 
will, therefore, transcribe the title-page. "An Epistolary Discourse, 
proving from Scripture and the First Fathers, that the Soul is natur- 
ally Mortal, but Immortalized actually by the Pleasure of God to Pun- 
ishment or to Reward, by its Union with the Divine Baptismal Spirit, 
wherein is proved that none have the Power of giving this Divine Im- 
mortalizing Spirit since the Apostles, but only the Bishops. By H. 
Dodwell." Dr. Clarke, in a Letter to Dodwell (1706,; says that this 
Epistolary Discourse is " a book at which all good men are sorry, and 
all profane men rejoice. ,, 



KETTLE WELL ASTD FITZ WILLI AM. 231 

slit, their tongues bored through with red-hot iron, and 
their eyes knocked out with brickbats. With the nonju- 
rors, however, the author of this theory was still the great 
Mr. Dodwell ; and some, who thought it culpable lenity to 
tolerate a Presbyterian meeting, thought it at the same 
time gross illiberality to blame a learned and pious Jaco- 
bite for denying a doctrine so utterly unimportant in a re- 
ligious point of view, as that of the immortality of the 
soul.* 



KETTLEWELL AND FITZWILLIAM. 

Two other nonjurors deserve special mention, less on ac- 
count of their abilities and learning, than on account of 
their rare integrity, and of their not less rare candour. 
These were John Kettlewell, Eector of Coleshill, and John 
Fitzwilliam, Canon of Windsor. It is remarkable that 
both these men had seen much of Lord Kussell, and that 
both, though differing from him in political opinions, and 
strongly disapproving the part which he had taken in the 
Whig plot, had thought highly of his character, and had 
been sincere mourners for his death. He had sent to 
Kettlewell an affectionate message from the scaffold in 
Lincoln's Inn Fields. Lady Kussell, to her latest day, 
loved, trusted, and revered Fitzwilliam, who, when she was 
a girl, had been the friend of her father, the virtuous 
Southampton. The two clergymen agreed in refusing to 
swear ; but they, from that moment, took different paths. 
Kettlewell was one of the most active members of his par- 
ty : he declined no drudgery in the common cause, pro- 
vided only that it were such drudgery as did not misbecome 
an honest man ; and he defended his opinions in several 
tracts, which give a much higher notion of his sincerity than 
of his judgment or acuteness.f Fitzwilliam thought that 
he had done enough in quitting his pleasant dwelling and 

* See Leslie's Rehearsals, No. 286, 287. 

t See his works, and the highly curious life of him which was 
compiled from the papers of his friends Hickes and Nelson. 



232 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

garden under the shadow of Saint George's Chapel, and 
in betaking himself with his books to a small lodging in 
an attic. He could not with a safe conscience acknow- 
ledge William and Mary : but he did not conceive that he 
was bound to be always stirring up sedition against them ; 
and he passed the last years of his life, under the power- 
ful protection of the House of Bedford, in innocent and 
studious repose.* 



TILLOTSON, AECHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 

Of all the members of the Low Church party, Tillotson 
stood highest in general estimation. As a preacher, he 
was thought by his contemporaries to have surpassed all 
rivals living or dead. Posterity has reversed this judg- 
ment. Yet Tillotson still keeps his place as a legitimate 
English classic. His highest flights were indeed far below 
those of Taylor, of Barrow, and of South ; but his oratory 
was more correct and equable than theirs. No quaint con- 
ceits, no pedantic quotations from Talmudists and scholi- 
asts, no mean images, buffoon stories, scurrilous invec- 
tives, ever marred the effect of his grave and temperate 
discourses. His reasoning was just sufficiently profound and 
sufficiently refined to be followed by a popular audience with 
that slight degree of intellectual exertion which is a pleasure. 
His style is not brilliant ; but it is pure, transparently clear, 
and equally free from the levity and from the stiffness which 
disfigure the sermons of some eminent divines of the sev- 
enteenth century. He is always serious : yet there is about 
his manner a certain graceful ease which marks him as a 
man who knows the world, who has lived in populous cities 
and in splendid courts, and who has conversed, not only 
with books, but with lawyers and merchants, wits and 

* See Fitzwilliam's correspondence with Lady Russell, and his evi- 
dence on the trial of Ashton, in the State Trials. The only work 
which Fitzwilliam, as far as I have been able to discover, ever pub- 
lished, was a sermon on the Rye House Plot, preached a few weeks 
after Russell's execution. There are some sentences in this Sermon 
which I a little wonder that the widow and the family forgave. 



TILLOTSON, AECHBISHO? OF CANTEBBUIIY. 233 

beauties, statesmen and princes. The greatest charm of 
his compositions, however, is derived from the benignity 
and candour which appear in every line, and which shone 
forth not less conspicuously in his life than in his writ 
ings. 

As a theologian, Tillotson, was certainly not less lati- 
tudinarian than Burnet. Yet mamy of those clergymen to 
whom Burnet was an object of implacable aversion, spoke 
of Tillotson with tenderness and respect. It is therefore 
not strange that the two friends should have formed differ- 
ent estimates of the temper of the priesthood, and should 
have expected different results from the meeting of the 
Convocation. Tillotson was not displeased with the vote 
of the Commons. He conceived that changes made in re- 
ligious institutions by mere secular authority might dis- 
gust many churchmen, who would yet be perfectly willing 
to vote, in an ecclesiastical synod, for changes more exten- 
sive still ; and his opinion had great weight with the 
King.* It was resolved that the Convocation should meet 
at the beginning of the next session of Parliament, and 
that in the meantime a commission should issue, empower- 
ing some eminent divines to examine the Liturgy, the 
canons, and the whole system of jurisprudence adminis- 
tered by the Courts Christian, and to report on the altera- 
tions which it might be desirable to make.j 

ost of the bishops who had taken the oaths were in 
this commission ; and with them were joined twenty priests 
of great note. Of the twenty, Tillotson was the most 
important : for he was known to speak the sense both of 
the King and of the Queen. Among those Commissioners 
who looked up to Tillotson as their chief, was Stillingfleet, 
Dean of St. Paul's, Sharp, Dean of Norwich, Patrick, 
Dean of Peterborough, Tenison, Eector of St. Martin's, 
and Fowler, to whose judicious firmness was chiefly to be 
ascribed the determination of the London clergy not to 
read the Declaration of Indulgence. 

Tillotson was nominated to the Archbishopric, and was 
consecrated on Whitsunday, in the church of St. Mary Le 

* Birch's Life of Tillotson. 

t See the Discourse concerning the Ecclesiastical Commission, 
1689. 



234 macaulay's miscellaneous weittn'gs. 

Bow. Compton, cruelly mortified, refused to bear any 
part in the ceremony. His place was supplied by Mew, 
Bishop of Winchester, who was assisted by Burnet, Still- 
ingfieet and Hough. The congregation was the most 
splendid that had been seen in any place of worship since 
the coronation. The Queen's drawing-room was, on that 
day, deserted. Most of the peers who were in town met 
in the morning at Bedford House, and went thence in pro- 
cession to Cheapside. Norfolk, Caermarthen and Dorset 
were conspicuous in the throng. Devonshire, who was im- 
patient to see his woods at Chatsworth in their summer 
beauty, had deferred his departure in order to mark his 
respect for Tillotson. The crowd which lined the streets 
greeted the new Primate warmly. For he had, during 
many years, preached in the city ; and his eloquence, his 
probity, and the singular gentleness of his temper and 
manners, had made him the favourite of the Londoners.* 
But the congratulations and applauses of his friends could 
not drown the roar of execration which the Jacobites set 
up. According to them, he was a thief who had not en- 
tered by the door, but had climbed over the fences. He 
was a hireling whose own the sheep were not, who had 
usurped the crook of the good shepherd, and who might 
well be expected to leave the flock at the mercy of every 
wolf. He was an Arian, a Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist. 
He had cozened the world by fine phrases, and by a show 
of moral goodness : but he was in truth a far more danger- 
ous enemy of the Church than he could have been if he 
had openly declared himself a disciple of Hobbes, and had 
lived as loosely as Wilmot. He had taught the fine gen- 
tlemen and ladies who admired his style, and who were 
constantly seen round his pulpit, that they might be very 
good Christians, and yet might believe the account of the 
Fall in the book of Genesis to be allegorical. Indeed, 
they might easily be as good Christians as he : for he had 
never been christened : his parents were Anabaptists : he 

* London Gazette, June 1, 1691 ; Birch's Life of Tillotson : Con- 
gratulatory Poem to the Reverend Dr. Tillotson on his Promotion, 
1691 ; Vernon to Wharton, May 28 and 30, 1691. These letters to 
Wharton are in the Bodleian Library, and form part of a highly cu- 
rious collection, which was kindly pointed out to me by Dr. Bandinel. 



TILLOTSON, AKCHBISHOP OF CANTEKBT7BY. 235 

had lost their religion when he was a boy ; and he had 
never found another. In ribald lampoons he was nick- 
named Undipped John. The parish register of his bap- 
tism was produced in vain. His enemies still continued 
to complain that they had lived to see fathers of the 
Church who never were her children. They made up a 
story that the Queen had felt bitter remorse for the great 
crime by which she had obtained a throne, that in her 
agony she had applied to Tillotson, and that he had com- 
forted her by assuring her that the punishment of the 
wicked in a future state would not be eternal. * The 
Archbishop's mind was naturally of almost feminine deli- 
cacy, and had been rather softened than braced by the 
habits of a long life, during which contending sects and 
factions had agreed in speaking of his abilities with admi- 
ration, and of his character with esteem. The storm of 
obloquy which he had to face for the first time at more 
than sixty years of age, was too much for him. His spir- 
its declined : his health gave way : yet he neither flinched 
from his duty nor attempted to revenge himself on his 
persecutors. A few days after his consecration, some per- 
sons were seized while dispersing libels in which he was 
reviled. The law officers of the Crown proposed to insti- 
tute prosecutions ; but he insisted that nobody should be 
punished on his account.f Once, when he had company 
with him, a sealed packet was put into his hands : he 
opened it ; and out fell a mask. His friends were shocked 
and incensed by this cowardly insult ; but the Archbishop, 
trying to conceal his anguish by a smile, pointed to the 
pamphlets which covered his table, and said that the re- 
proach which the emblem of the mask was intended to 
convey, might be called gentle when compared with other 
reproaches which he daily had to endure. After his death, 

* Birch's Life of Tillotson ; Leslie's Charge of Socinianism against 
Dr. Tillotson considered, by a True Son of the Church, 1695 ; Hickes's 
Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, 1695 ; Catalogue of 
Books of the Newest Fashion to be Sold by Auction at the Whig's 
Coflee House, evidently printed in 1693. More than sixty years later 
Johnson described a sturdy Jacobite as firmly convinced that Tillotson 
died an Atheist ; Idler, No. 10. 

f Tillotson to Lady Russell, June 23, 1691. 



236 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

a bundle of the savage lampoons which the nonjurors had 
circulated against him was found among his papers, with 
this indorsement : " I pray God forgive them : I do." * 



ALDEICH AND JANE, 

With such men as those who have been named, were min- 
gled some divines who belonged to the High Church party. 
Conspicuous among these were two of the rulers of Oxford, 
Aldrich and Jane. Aldrich had recently been appointed 
Dean of Christchurch, in the room of the Papist Massey, 
whom James had, in direct violation of the laws, placed 
at the head of that great college. The new Dean was a 
polite, though not a profound, scholar, and a jovial, hos- 
pitable gentleman. He was the author of some theologi- 
cal tracts which have long been forgotten, and of a com- 
pendium of logic which is still used : but the best works 
which he has bequeathed to posterity are his catches. 
Jane, the King's Professor of Divinity, was a graver but 
a less estimable man. He had borne the chief' part in 
framing that decree by which his University ordered the 
works of Milton and Buchanan to be publicly burned in 
the schools. A few years later, irritated and alarmed by 
the persecution of the Bishops and by the confiscation of 
the revenues of Magdalene College, he had renounced the 
doctrine of non-resistance, had repaired to the head-quar- 
ters of the Prince of Orange, and had assured His High- 
ness that Oxford would willingly coin her plate for the 
support of the war against her oppressor. During a short 
time Jane was generally considered a Whig, and was sharp- 
ly lampooned by some of his old allies. He was so unfor- 
tunate as to have a name which was an excellent mark for 
the learned punsters of his university. Several epigrams 
were written on the double-faced Janus, who, having got 

* Birclrs Life of Tillotson ; Memorials of Tillotson by liis pupil 
John Beardmore ; Sherlock's sermon preached in the Temple Church 
on the death of Queen Mary, 169 £-5. 



EDMUND LUDLOW. 237 

a professorship by looking one way, now hoped to get a 
bishopric by looking another. That he hoped to get a 
bishopric was perfectly true. He demanded the see of 
Exeter as a reward due to his services. He was refused. 
The refusal convinced him that the Church had as much 
to apprehend from Latitudinarianism as from Popery ; and 
he speedily became a Tory again. * 



EDMUND LUDLOW. 

The names of Cromwell, of Ireton, and of the other chiefs 
of the conquering army, were in many mouths. One of 
those chiefs, Edmund Ludlow, was still living. At twenty- 
two he had served as a volunteer in the parliamentary 
army ; at thirty he had arisen to the rank of Lieutenant 
General. He was now old ; but the vigour of his mind 
was unimpaired. His courage was of the truest temper ; 
his understanding strong, but narrow. What he saw he 
saw clearly : but he saw not much at a glance. In an age 
of perfidy and levity, he had, amidst manifold temptations 
and dangers, adhered firmly to the principles of his youth. 
His enemies could net deny that his life had been consist- 
ent, and that with the same spirit which he had stood up 
against the Stuarts, he had stood up against the Crom- 
wells. There was but a single blemish on his fame : but 
that blemish, in the opinion of the great majority of his 
countrymen, was one for which no merit could compensate, 
and which no time could efface. His name and seal were 
on the death warrant of Charles the First. 

After the Eestoration, Ludlow found a refuge on the 
shores of the Lake of Geneva. He was accompanied 
thither by another member of the High Court of Justice, 
John Lisle, the husband of that Alice Lisle whose death 
has left a lasting stain on the memory of James the Sec- 
ond. But even in Switzerland the regicides were not safe. 

* Birch's Life of Tillotson : Life of Prideaux ; Gentleman's Maga- 
zine for Jnne and July, 1745. 



238 macaxjlay's miscellaneous writings. 

A large price was set on their heads ; and a succession of 
Irish adventurers, inflamed by national and religious ani- 
mosity, attempted to earn the bribe. Lisle fell by the 
hand of one of these assassins. But Ludlow escaped un- 
hurt from all the machinations of his enemies. A smalL 
knot of vehement and determined Whigs regarded him 
with a veneration, which increased as years rolled away, 
and left him almost the only survivor, certainly the most 
illustrious survivor, of a mighty race of men, the conquer- 
ors in a terrible civil war, the judges of a king, the found- 
ers of a republic. More than once he had been invited by 
the enemies of the House of Stuart to leave his asylum, to 
become their captain, and to give the signal for rebellion : 
but he had wisely refused to take any part in the desper- 
ate enterprises which the Wildmans and Fergusons were 
never weary of planning.* 

The Eevolution opened a new prospect to him. The 
right of the people to resist oppression, a right which, dur- 
ing many years, no man could assert without exposing 
himself to ecclesiastical anathemas and to civil penalties, 
had been solemnly recognized by the Estates of the realm, 
and had been proclaimed by Garter King at Arms on the 
very spot where the memorable scaffold had been set up 
forty years before. James had not, indeed, like Charles, 
died the death of a traitor. Yet the punishment of the 
son might seem to differ from the punishment of the father 
rather in degree than in principle. Those who had recent- 
ly waged war on a tyrant, who had turned him out of his 
palace, who had frightened him out of his country, who 
had deprived him of his crown, might perhaps think that 
the crime of going one step further had been sufficiently 
expiated by thirty years of banishment. Ludlow's admi- 
rers, some of whom appear to have been in high public 
situations, assured him that he might safely venture over, 
nay, that he might expect to be sent in high command to 
Ireland, where his name was still cherished by his old sol- 
diers and by their children.t He came ; and early in Sep- 
tember it was known that he was in London. J But it 

* Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845. 

f See the Preface to the first Edition of his Memoirs, Vevay, 1698. 

J " Colonel Ludlow, an old Oliverian, and one of King Charles 



EDMUND LUDLOW. 239 

soon appeared that he and his friends had misunderstood 
the temper of the English people. By all, except a small 
extreme section of the Whig party, the act, in which he 
had borne a part never to be forgotten, was regarded, not 
merely with the disapprobation due to a great violation of 
law and justice, but with horror such as even the Gunpow- 
der Plot had not excited. The absurd and almost impious 
service which is still read in our churches on the thirtieth 
of January, had produced in the minds of the vulgar 
a strange association of ideas. The sufferings of Charles 
were confounded with the sufferings of the Eedeemer of 
mankind ; and every regicide was a Judas, a Caiaphas, or 
a Herod. It w^as true that, when Ludlow sate on the tri- 
bunal in Westminster Hall, he was an ardent enthusiast 
of twenty-eight, and that he now returned from exile a 
greyheaded and wrinkled man in his seventieth year. 
Perhaps, therefore, if he had been content to live in close 
retirement, and to shun places of public resort, even zeal- 
ous Eoyalists might not have grudged the old Eepublican 
a grave in his native soil. But he had no thought of hid- 
ing himself. It was soon rumoured that one of those mur- 
derers, who had brought on England guilt, for which she 
annually, in sackcloth and ashes, implored God not to en- 
ter into judgment with her, was strutting about the streets 
of her capital, and boasting that he should ere long com- 
mand her armies. His lodgings, it was said, were the 
head-quarters of the most noted enemies of monarchy and 
episcopacy.* The subject was brought before the House 
of Commons. The Tory members called loudly for justice 
*on the traitor. None of the "Whigs ventured to say a word 
in his defence. One or two faintly expressed a doubt 
whether the fact of his return had been proved by evidence 
such as would warrant a parliamentary proceeding. The 
objection was disregarded. It was resolved, without a 
division, that the King should be requested to issue a pro- 
clamation for the apprehending of Ludlow. Seymour pre- 
sented the address ; and the King promised to do what 
was asked. Some days, however, elapsed before the pro- 

the First his Judges, is arrived lately in this kingdom from Switzer- 
land." — Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, September, 1689. 
* Third Cavant against the Whigs, 1712. 



240 MACAULAT'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

clamation appeared.* Ludlow had time to make his es- 
cape, and again hid himself in his Alpine retreat, never 
again to emerge. English travellers are still taken to see 
his house close to the lake, and his tomb in a church 
among the vineyards which overlook the little town of 
Vevay. On the house was formerly legible an inscription 
purporting that to him to whom God is a father, every 
land is a fatherland ; f and the epitaph on the tomb still 
attests the feelings with which the stern old Puritan to the 
last regarded the people of Ireland and the House of 
Stuart. 



SIE EOBEST SAWYER 

Few persons stood higher in the estimation of the Tory 
party than Sir Eobert Sawyer. He was a man of ample 
fortune and aristocratical connections, of orthodox opinions 
and regular life, an able and experienced lawyer, a well- 
read scholar, and, in spite of a little pomposity, a good 
speaker. He had been Attorney-General at the time of 
the detection of the Eye House Plot ; he had been em- 
ployed for the Crown, in the prosecutions which followed ; 
and he had conducted those prosecutions with an eager- 
ness which would, in our time, be called cruelty by all 
parties, but which, in his own time, and to his own party, 
seemed to be merely laudable zeal. His friends indeed 
asserted that he was conscientious even to scrupulosity in m 
matters of life and death ; J but this is an eulogy which 
persons who bring the feelings of a nineteenth century to 
the study of the State Trials of the seventeenth century, 
will have some difficulty in understanding. The best ex- 
cuse which can be made for this part of his life, is that the 

* Commons' Journals, November 6 and 8, 1689 ; Grey's Debates ; 
London Gazette, November 18. 

•)■ " Omne solum forti patria, quia patris." See Addison's Travels. 
It is a remarkable circumstance that Addison, though a Whig, speaks 
of Ludlow in language which would better have become a Tory, and 
sneers at the inscription as cant. 

J Roger North's Life of Guildford. 



SIR ROBERT SAWYER. 241 

stain ot innocent blood was common to him with almost 
all the eminent public men of those evil days. When we 
blame him for prosecuting Bussell, we must not forget that 
Bussell had prosecuted Stafford. 

Great as Sawyer's offences were, he had made great 
atonement for them, he had stood up manfully against Po- 
pery and despotism : he had, in the very presence cham- 
ber, positively refused to draw warrants in contravention 
of acts of Parliament : he had resigned his lucrative office 
rather than appear in Westminster Hall as the champion 
of the dispensing power : he had been the leading counsel 
for the seven Bishops ; and he had, on the day of their 
trial, done his duty ably, honestly, and fearlessly. He 
was therefore a favourite with High Churchmen, and might 
be thought to have fairly earned his pardon from the 
Whigs. But the Whigs were not in a pardoning mood ; 
and Sawyer was now called to account for his conduct in 
the case of Sir Thomas Armstrong. 

If Armstrong was not belied, he was deep in the worst 
secrets of the Bye House Plot, and was one of those who 
undertook to slay the two royal brothers. When the con- 
spiracy was discovered, he fled to the continent and was 
outlawed. The magistrates of Leyden were induced by a 
bribe to deliver him up. He was hurried on board of an 
English ship, carried to London, and brought before the 
King's bench. Sawyer moved the court to award execu- 
tion on the outlawry. Armstrong represented that a year 
had not yet elapsed since he had been outlawed, and that, 
by an Act passed in the reign of Edward the Sixth, an 
outlaw who yielded himself within the year was entitled 
to plead not guilty, and to put himself on his country. 
To this it was answered that Armstrong had not yielded 
himself, that he had been dragged to the bar a prisoner, 
and that he had no right to claim a privilege which was 
evidently meant to be given only to persons who volunta- 
rily rendered themselves up to public justice. Jeffreys and 
the other judges unanimously overruled Armstrong's objec- 
tion, and granted the award of execution. Then followed 
one of the most terrible of the many terrible scenes which, 
in those times, disgraced our Courts. The daughter of the 
unhappy man was at his side. " My Lord," she cried out, 
11 



242 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

" you will not murder my father. This is murdering a 
man." " How now? " roared the chief justice. " Who is 
this woman ? Take her, Marshal. Take her away." She 
was forced out, crying as she went, " God Almighty's 
judgments light on you ! " " God Almighty's judgment," 
said Jeffreys, "will light on traitors. Thank God, I am 
clamour proof." When she was gone, her father again in- 
sisted on what he conceived to be his right. " I ask," he 
said, "only the benefit of the law." "And, by the grace 
of God, you shall have it," said the judge. " Mr. Sheriff, 
see that execution be done on Friday next. There is 
the benefit of the law for you." On the following Friday, 
Armstrong was hanged, drawn and quartered ; and his 
head was placed over Westminster Hall* 

The insolence and cruelty of Jeffreys excite, even at 
the distance of so many years, an indignation which makes 
it difficult to be just to him. Yet a perfectly dispassion- 
ate inquirer may think it by no means clear that the award 
of execution was illegal. There was no precedent ; and 
the words of the Act of Edward the Sixth may, without 
any straining, be construed as the court construed them. 
Indeed, had the penalty been only fine or imprisonment, 
nobody would have seen anything reprehensible in the 
proceeding. But to send a man to the gallows as a traitor, 
without confronting him with his accusers, without hearing 
his defence, solely because a timidity which is perfectly 
compatible with innocence has impelled him to hide him- 
self, is surely a violation, if not of any written law, yet of 
those great principles to which all laws ought to conform. 
The case was brought before the House of Commons. The 
orphan daughter of Armstrong came to the bar to demand 
vengeance ; and a warm debate followed. Sawyer was 
fiercely attacked and strenuously defended. The Tories 
declared that he appeared to them to have done only what, 
as counsel for the crown, he was bound to do, and to have 
discharged his duty to God, to the King, and to the pris- 
oner. If the award was legal nobody was to blame, and if 
the award was illegal, the blame lay, not with the Attor- 



* See the account of the proceedings in the collection of State 
Trials. 



CARMARTHEN". 243 

ney General, but with the judges. There would be an end 
of all liberty of speech at the bar, if an advocate was to 
be punished for making a strictly regular application to a 
Court, and for arguing that certain words in a statute 
were to be understood in a certain sense. The Whigs 
called Sawyer murderer, bloodhound, hangman. If the 
liberty of speech claimed by advocates meant the liberty 
of haranguing men to death, it was high time that the 
nation should rise up and exterminate the whole race of 
lawyers. " Things will never be well done," said one ora- 
tor, "till some of that profession be made examples." 
" No crime to demand execution ! " exclaimed John Hamp- 
den. " We shall be told next that it was no crime in the 
Jews to cry out c Crucify him.' " A wise and just man 
would probably have been of opinion that this was not a 
case for severity. Sawyer's conduct might have been, to 
a certain extent, culpable : but, if an act of Indemnity 
was to be passed at all, it was to be passed for the benefit 
of persons whose conduct had been culpable. The ques- 
tion was not whether he was guiltless, but whether his 
guilt was of so peculiarly black a dye that he ought, not- 
withstanding all his sacrifices and services, to be excluded 
by name from the mercy which was to be granted to many 
thousands of offenders. This question calm and impartial 
judges would probably have decided in his favour. It was, 
however, resolved that he should be excepted from the in- 
demnity, and expelled from the house.* 



CAEEMAETHEN. 



Caermarthen was the chief adviser of the Crown on all 
matters relating to the internal administration and to the 
management of the two Houses of Parliament. The 
white staff, and the immense power which accompanied the 
white staff, William was still determined never to entrust 

* Commons' Journals, Jan. 20, 1689-90 ; Grey's Debates, Jan. 18 
and 20. 



244 macaulay's miscellaneous weitings. 

to any subject. Caermarthen therefore continued to be 
lord president ; but he took possession of a suite of apart- 
ments in St. James's palace which was considered as pecu- 
liarly belonging to the Prime Minister.* He had, during 
the preceding year, pleaded ill health as an excuse for sel- 
dom appearing at the Council Board ; and the plea was 
not without foundation : for his digestive organs had some 
morbid peculiarities which puzzled the whole College of 
Physicians : his complexion was livid : his frame was mea- 
gre ; and his face, handsome and intellectual as it was, 
had a haggard look which indicated the restlessness of 
pain as well as the restlessness of ambition. f As soon, 
however, as he was once more minister, he applied himself 
strenuously to business, and toiled, every day, and all day 
long, with an energy which amazed every body who saw 
his ghastly countenance and tottering gait. 



SIR JOHN LOWTHER. 

Sir John Lowther became First Lord of the Treas- 
ury, and was the person on whom Caermarthen chiefly re- 
lied for the conduct of the ostensible business of the House 
of Commons. Lowther was a man of ancient descent, 
ample estate, and great parliamentary interest. Though 
not an old man, he was an old senator : for he had before 
he was of age, succeeded his father as knight of the shire 
for Westmoreland. In truth the representation of West- 
moreland was almost as much one of the hereditaments of 
the Lowther family as Lowther Hall. Sir John's abilities 
were respectable ; his manners, though sarcastically noticed 
in contemporary lampoons as too formal, were eminently 
courteous : his personal courage he was but too ready to 
prove : his morals were irreproachable : his time was di- 

* Van Citters to the States General, Feb. 11 (21) 1690. 

f A strange peculiarity of his constitution is mentioned in an ac- 
count of him which was published a few months after his death. See 
the volume entitled " Lives and Characters of the most Illustrious 
Persons, British and Foreign, who died in the year 1712." 



SIR JOHN LOWTHER. 245 

vided "between respectable labours and respectable plea- 
sures : his chief business was to attend the House of Com- 
mons and to preside on the Bench of Justice : his favour- 
ite amusements were reading and gardening. In opinions 
he was a very moderate Tory. He was attached to heredi- 
tary monarchy and to the Established Church : but he had 
concurred in the Eevolution : he had no misgivings touch- 
ing the title of William and Mary : he had sworn allegi- 
ance to them without any mental reservation ; and he 
appears to have strictly kept his oath. Between him 
and Caermarthen there was a close connection. They 
had acted together cordially in the Northern insurrection ; 
and they agreed in their political views, as nearly as a 
very cunning statesman and a very honest country gentle- 
man could be expected to agree.* By Caermarthen's in- 
fluence Lowther was now raised to one of the most impor- 
tant places in the kingdom. Unfortunately it was a place 
requiring qualities very different from those which suffice 
to make a valuable county member and chairman of 
quarter sessions. The tongue of the new First Lord of 
the Treasury was not sufficiently ready, nor was his tem- 
per sufficiently callous for his post. He had neither 
adroitness to parry, nor fortitude to endure, the gibes and 
reproaches to which, in his new character of courtier and 
placeman, he was exposed. There was also something to 
be done which he was too scrupulous to do ; something 
which had never been done by Wolsey or Burleigh ; some- 
thing which has never been done by any English states- 
man of our generation ; but which, from the time of 
Charles the Second to the time of George the Third, was 
one of the most important parts of the business of a min- 
ister. 

The history of the rise, progress, and decline of par- 

* My notion of Lowther's character has been chiefly formed 
' from two papers written by himself, one of which has been printed, 
though I believe not published. A copy of the other is among the 
Mackintosh MSS. Something I have taken from contemporary satires. 
That Lowther was too ready to expose his life in private encounters is 
sufficiently proved by the fact that, when he was First Lord of the 
Treasury, he accepted a challenge from a custom house officer whom 
he had dismissed. There was a duel; and Lowther was severely 
wounded. This event is mentioned in Luttrell's Diary, April 1690. 



246 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

liamentary corruption in England still remains to be 
written. 



SIR JOHN TREVOR. 

It was necessary for the Lord President to have in the 
House of Commons an agent for the purchase of members ; 
and Lowther was both too awkward and too scrupulous to 
be such an agent. But a man in whom craft and profli- 
gacy were united in a high degree was without difficulty 
found. This was the Master of the Rolls, Sir John Tre- 
vor, who had been Speaker in the single Parliament held 
by James. High as Trevor had risen in the world, there 
were people who could still remember him a strange look- 
ing lawyer's clerk in the Inner Temple. Indeed, nobody 
who had ever seen him was likely to forget him. For his 
grotesque features and his hideous squint were far beyond 
the reach of caricature. His parts, which were quick and 
vigorous, had enabled him early to master the science of 
chicane. Gambling and betting were his amusements ; 
and out of these amusements he contrived to extract much 
business in the way of his profession. For his opinion on 
a question arising out of a wager or a game at chance had 
as much authority as a judgment of any court in West- 
minster Hall. He soon rose to be one of the boon com- 
panions whom Jeffreys hugged in fits of maudlin friend- 
ship over the bottle at night, and cursed and reviled in 
court on the morrow. Under such a teacher, Trevor rap- 
idly became a proficient in that peculiar kind of rhetoric 
which had enlivened the trials of Baxter and of Alice 
Lisle. Report indeed spoke of some scolding matches be- 
tween the Chancellor and his friend, in which the disciple 
had been not less voluble and scurrilous than the master. 
These contests, however, did not take place till the younger 
adventurer had attained riches and dignities such that he 
no longer stood in need of the patronage which had raised 
him.* Among High Churchmen, Trevor, in spite of his 

* Roo-er North's Life of Guildford. 



QUEEN ANNE AND HEB FAYOUKITES. 247 

notorious want of principle, had at this time a certain 
popularity, which he seems to have owed chiefly to their 
conviction that, however insincere he might be in general, 
his hatred of the dissenters was genuine and hearty. 
There was little doubt that, in a House of Commons in 
which the Tories had a majority, he might easily, with the 
support of the Court, be chosen Speaker. He was impa- 
tient to be again in his old post, which he well knew how 
to make one of the most lucrative in the kingdom ; and 
he willingly undertook that secret and shameful office for 
which Lowther was altogether unqualified. 



THE PRINCESS OF DENMARK (QUEEN ANNE) 
AND HER FAVOURITES. 

The Civil List was charged with an annuity of twenty 
thousand pounds to the Princess of Denmark, in addition 
to an annuity of thirty thousand pounds which had been 
settled on her at the time of her marriage. This arrange- 
ment was the result of a compromise which had been 
effected with much difficulty and after many irritating dis- 
putes. The King and Queen had never, since the com- 
mencement of their reign, been on very good terms with 
their sister. That William should have been disliked by 
a woman who had just sense enough to perceive that his 
temper was sour and his manners repulsive, and who was 
utterly incapable of appreciating his higher qualities, is 
not extraordinary. But Mary was made to be loved. So 
lively and intelligent a woman could not indeed derive 
much pleasure from the society of Anne, who, when in 
good humour, was meekly stupid, and, when in bad hu- 
mour, was sulkily stupid. Yet the Queen, whose kindness 
had endeared her to her humblest attendants, would hard- 
ly have made an enemy of one whom it was her duty and 
her interest to make a friend, had not an influence strangely 
potent and strangely malignant been incessantly at work 
to divide the Royal House against itself. The fondness of 



248 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

the Princess for Lady Marlborough was such as, in a su- 
perstitious age, would have been ascribed to some talisman 
or potion. Not only had the friends, in their confidential 
intercourse with each other, dropped all ceremony and all 
titles, and become plain Mrs. Morley and plain Mrs. Free- 
man ; but even Prince George, who cared as much for the 
dignity of his birth as he was capable of caring for any 
thing but claret and calvered salmon, submitted to be Mr. 
Morley. The Countess boasted that she had selected the 
name of Freeman because it was peculiarly suited to the 
frankness and boldness of her character ; and, to do her 
justice, it was not by the ordinary arts of courtiers that 
she established and long maintained her despotic empire 
over the feeblest of minds. She had little of that tact 
which is the characteristic talent of her sex : she was far 
too violent to flatter or to dissemble : but, by a rare chance, 
she had fallen in with a nature on which dictation and 
contradiction acted as philtres. In this grotesque friend- 
ship all the loyalty, the patience, the self-devotion, was on 
the side of the mistress. The whims, the haughty airs, 
the fits of ill temper, were on the side of the waiting 
woman. 

Nothing is more curious than the relation in which the 
two ladies stood to Mr. Freeman, as they called Marlbo- 
rough. In foreign countries people knew in general that 
Anne was governed by the Churchills. They knew also 
that the man who appeared to enjoy so large a share of 
her favour was not only a great soldier and politician, but 
also one of the finest gentlemen of his time, that his face 
and figure were eminently handsome, his temper at once 
bland and resolute, his manners at once engaging and no- 
ble. Nothing could be more natural than that graces and 
accomplishments like his should win a female heart. On 
the Continent, therefore, many persons imagined that he 
was Anne's favoured lover ; and he was so described in 
contemporary French libels which have long been forgot- 
ten. In England this calumny never found credit even 
with the vulgar, and is nowhere to be found even in the 
most ribald doggrel that was sung about our streets. In 
truth, the Princess seems never to have been guilty of a 
thought inconsistent with her conjugal vows. To her, 



QUEEN AXXE AND HER FAVOURITES. 249 

Marlborough, with all his genius and his valour, his beau- 
ty and his grace, was nothing but the husband of her 
friend. Direct power over Her Boyal Highness he had 
none. He could influence her only by the instrumentality 
of his wife ; and his wife was no passive instrument. 
Though it is impossible to discover, in any thing that she 
ever did, said or wrote, any indication of superior under- 
standing, her fierce passions and strong will enabled her 
often to rule a husband who was born to rule grave senates 
and mighty armies. His courage, that courage which the 
most perilous emergencies of war only made cooler and 
more steady, failed him when he had to encounter his 
Sarah's ready tears and voluble reproaches, the poutings of 
her lip and the tossings of her head. History exhibits to 
us few spectacles more remarkable than that of a great 
and wise man, who, when he had combined vast and pro- 
found schemes of policy, could carry them into effect only 
by inducing one foolish woman, who was often unmanage- 
able, to manage another woman who was more foolish 
still. 

In one point the Earl and the Countess were perfectly 
agreed. They were equally bent on getting money; 
though, when it was got, he loved to hoard it, and she was 
not unwilling to spend it.* The favour of the Princess 
they both regarded as a valuable estate. In her father's 
reign they had begun to grow rich by means of her boun- 
ty. She was naturally inclined to parsimony ; and, even 
when she was on the throne, her equipages and tables were 
by no means sumptuous.f It might have been thought, 
therefore, that, while she was a subject, thirty thousand a 
year, with a residence in the palace, would have been more 
than sufficient for all her wants. There were probably not 
in the kingdom two noblemen possessed of such an income. 
But no income would satisfy the greediness of those who 

* In a contemporary lampoon are these lines : 

<; Oh, happy couple ! In their life 
There does appear no sign of strife, 
They do agree so in the'main, 
To sacrifice their sonls for gain." 

The Female ttne, 1690. 

f Swift mentions the deficiency of hospitality and magnificence in 
her household. Journal to Stella, August 8, 1711. 

ii* 



250 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

governed her. She repeatedly contracted debts which 
James repeatedly discharged, not without expressing much 
surprise and displeasure. 

The Kevolution opened to the Churchills a new and 
boundless prospect of gain. The whole conduct of their 
mistress at the great crisis had proved that she had no 
will, no judgment, no conscience, but theirs. To them she 
had sacrificed affections, prejudices, habits, interests. In 
obedience to them she had joined in the conspiracy against 
her father : she had fled from Whitehall in the depth of 
winter, through ice and mire, to a hackney coach : she had 
taken refuge in the rebel camp : she had consented to 
yield her place in the order of succession to the Prince of 
Orange. They saw with pleasure that she, over whom 
they possessed such boundless influence, possessed no com- 
mon influence over others. Scarcely had the Eevolution 
been accomplished, when many Tories, disliking both the 
King who had been driven oat and the King who had 
come in, and doubting whether their religion had more to 
fear from Jesuits or from Latitudinarians, showed a strong 
disposition to rally round Anne. Nature had made her a 
bigot. Such was the constitution of her mind, that to the 
religion of her nursery she could not but adhere, without 
examination and without doubt, till she was laid in her 
coffin. In the court of her father she had been deaf to all 
that could be urged in favour of transubstantiation and 
auricular confession. In the court of her brother-in-law 
she was equally deaf to all that could be urged in favour 
of a general union among Protestants. This slowness and 
obstinacy made her important. It was a great thing to be 
the only member of a Koyal Family who regarded Papists 
and Presbyterians with an impartial aversion. While a 
large party was disposed to make her an idol, she was re- 
garded by her two artful servants merely as a puppet. 
They knew that she had it in her power to give serious 
annoyance to the government ; and they determined to 
use this power in order to extort money, nominally for her, 
but really for themselves. While Marlborough was com- 
manding the English forces in the Low Countries, the 
execution of the plan was necessarily left to his wife ; and 
she acted, not as he would doubtless have acted, with pru- 



QUEEN ANNE AND HER FAVOURITES. 251 

dence and temper, but, as is plain even from her own nar- 
rative, with odious violence and insolence. Indeed, she 
had passions to gratify from which he was altogether free. 
He, though one of the most covetous, was one of the least 
acrimonious of mankind; but malignity was in her a 
stronger passion than avarice. She hated easily: she 
hated heartily ; and she hated implacably. Among the 
objects of her hatred were all who were related to her mis- 
tress either on the paternal or on the maternal side. No 
person who had a natural interest in the Princess could 
observe without uneasiness the strange infatuation which 
made her the slave of an imperious and reckless terma- 
gant. This the Countess well knew. In her view the 
Koyal Family and the family of Hyde, however they might 
differ as to other matters, were leagued against her ; and 
she detested them all, James, William and Mary, Claren- 
don and Kochester. Now was the time to wreak the ac- 
cumulated spite of years. It was not enough to obtain a 
great, a regal revenue for Anne. That revenue must be 
obtained by means which would wound and humble those 
whom the favourite abhorred. It must not be asked, it 
must not be accepted, as a mark of fraternal kindness, but 
demanded in hostile tones, and wrung by force from reluc- 
tant hands. No application was made to the King and 
Queen. But they learned with astonishment that Lady 
Marlborough was indefatigable in canvassing the Tory 
members of Parliament, that a Princess's party was form- 
ing, that the House of Commons would be moved to set- 
tle on Her Eoyal Highness a vast income independent of 
the Crown. Mary asked her sister what these proceedings 
meant. " I hear," said Anne, " that my friends have a 
mind to make me some settlement." It is said that the 
Queen, greatly hurt by an expression which seemed to 
imply that she and her husband were not among her sis- 
ter's friends, replied with unwonted sharpness, " Of what 
friends do you speak ? What friends have you except the 
King and me?"* The subject was never again men- 
tioned between the sisters. Mary was probably sensible 

* Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. But the Duchess was 
so abandoned a liar, that it is impossible to believe a word that she 
says, except when she accuses herself. 



252 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

that she had made a mistake in addressing herself to one 
who was merely a passive instrument in the hands of oth- 
ers. An attempt was made to open a negotiation with the 
Countess. After some inferior agents had expostulated 
with her in vain, Shrewsbury waited on her. It might 
have been expected that his intervention would have been 
successful : for, if the scandalous chronicle of those 
times could be trusted, he had stood high, too high in her 
favour.* He was authorized by the King to promise that, 
if the Princess would desist from soliciting "he members 
of the House of Commons to support her cause, the in- 
come of Her Eoyal Highness should be increased from 
thirty thousand pounds to fifty thousand. The Countess 
flatly rejected this offer. The King's word, she had the 
insolence to hint, was not a sufficient security. " 1 am 
confident," said Shrewsbury, " that His Majesty will 
strictly fulfil his engagements. If he breaks them, I will 
not serve him an hour longer." 6i That may be very hon- 
ourable in you," answered the pertinacious vixen, " but it 
will be very poor comfort to the Princess." Shrewsbury, 
after vainly attempting to move the servant, was at length 
admitted to an audience of the mistress. Anne, in lan- 
guage doubtless dictated by her friend Sarah, told him 
that the business had gone too far to be stopped, and must 
be left to the decision of the Commons.! 

The truth was that the Princess's prompters hoped to 
obtain from Parliament a much larger sum than was offered 
by the King. Nothing less than seventy thousand a year 
would content them. But their cupidity overreached it- 
self. The House of Commons showed a great disposition 
to gratify Her Koyal Highness. But, when at length her 
too eager adherents ventured to name the sum which they 
wished to grant, the murmurs were loud. Seventy thou- 
sand a year at a time when the necessary expenses of the 
State were daily increasing, when the receipt of the cus- 

* See the Female Nine. 

f The Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. With that habit- 
ual inaccuracy, which, even when she has no motive for lying, makes 
it necessary to read every word written by her with suspicion, she 
creates Shrewsbury a Duke, and represents herself as calling him 
" Your Grace." He was not made a Duke till 1694. 



GEORGE FOX. 253 

toms was daily diminishing, when trade was low, when 
every geutleman, every farmer, was retrenching something 
from the charge of his table and his cellar ! The general 
opinion was that the sum which the King was understood 
to be willing to give would be amply sufficient.* At last 
something was conceded on both sides. The Princess was 
forced to content herself with fifty thousand a year ; and 
William agreed that this sum should be settled on her by 
Act of Parliament. She rewarded the services of Lady 
Marlborough with a pension of a thousand a year ; f but 
this was in all probability a very small part of what the 
Churchills gained by the arrangement. 

After these transactions the two royal sisters continued 
during many months to live on terms of civility and even 
of apparent friendship. But Mary, though she seems to 
have borne no malice to Anne, undoubtedly felt against 
Lady Marlborough as much resentment as a very gentle 
heart is capable of feeling. Marlborough had been out of 
England during a great part of the time which his wife 
had spent in canvassing among the Tories, and, though he 
had undoubtedly acted in concert with her, had acted, as 
usual, with temper and decorum. He therefore continued 
to receive from William many marks of favour which were 
unaccompanied by any indication of displeasure. 



GEOBGE FOX. 

While London was agitated by the news that a plot had 
been discovered, George Fox, the founder of the sect of 
Quakers, died. 

More than forty years had elapsed since Fox had be- 
gun to see visions and to cast out devils.J He was then 
a youth of pure morals and grave deportment, with a per- 

* Commons' Journals, December 17 and 18, 1689. 
f Vindication of the Duchess of Marlborough. 
X For a specimen of his visions, see his Journal, page 13 ; for his 
casting out of devils, page 26. I quote the folio edition of 1765. 



254 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

verse temper, with the education of a labouring man, and 
with an intellect in the most unhappy of all states, that is 
to say, too much disordered for liberty, and not sufficiently 
disordered for Bedlam. The circumstances in which he 
was placed were such as could scarcely fail to bring out in 
the strongest form the constitutional diseases of his mind. 
At the time when his faculties were ripening, Episcopa- 
lians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, were striving 
for mastery, and were, in every corner of the realm, refut- 
ing and reviling each other. Pie wandered from congre- 
gation to congregation ; he heard priests harangue against 
Purftans : he heard Puritans harangue against priests ; 
and he in vain applied for spiritual direction and consolation 
to doctors of both parties. One jolly old clergyman of the 
Anglican communion told him to smoke tobacco and sing 
psalms ; another advised him to go and lose some blood.* 
The young inquirer turned in disgust from these advisers 
to the Dissenters, and found them also blind guides. f 
After some time he came to the conclusion that no human 
being was competent to instruct him in divine things, and 
that the truth had been communicated to him by direct 
inspiration from heaven. He argued that, as the division 
of languages began at Babel, and as the persecutors of 
Christ put on the cross an inscription in Latin, Greek and 
Hebrew, the knowledge of languages, and more especially 
of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, must be useless to a Chris- 
tian minister. :f Indeed, he was so far from knowing many 

* Journal, page 4. f Journal, page 7. 

X u What they know, they know naturally, who turn from the 
command and err from the spirit, whose fruit withers, who saith that 
Hebrew, Greek, and Latine is the original : before Babell was, the 
earth was of one language ; and Nimrod the cunning hunter, before 
the Lord, which came out of cursed Ham's stock, the original and 
builder of Babell, whom God confounded with many languages, and this 
they say is the original who erred from the spirit and command ; and 
Pilate had his original Hebrew, Greek, and Latine, which crucified 
Christ and set over him." — A message from the Lord to the Parlia- 
ment of England, by G. Fox, 165L The same argument will bo 
found in the Journals, but has been put by the editor into a little bet- 
ter English. " Dost thou think to make ministers of Christ by thcso 
natural confused languages which sprung from Babell, are admired in 
Babylon, and set atop of Christ, the Life, by a persecutor ?" — page 

G4r. 



GEORGE FOX. 255 

languages, that he knew none ; nor can the most corrput 
passage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the unlearned, 
than his English often is to the most acute and attentive 
reader.* One of the precious truths which were divinely 
revealed to this new apostle was, that it was falsehood and 
adulation to use the second person plural instead of the 
second person singular. Another was, that to talk of the 
month of March was to worship the blood-thirsty god 
Mars, and that to talk of Monday was to pay idolatrous 
homage to the moon. To say Good morning or Good 
evening was highly reprehensible, for those phrases evi- 
dently imported that God had made bad days and bad 
nights.f A Christian was bound to face death itself rather 
than touch his hat to the greatest of mankind. When 
Fox was challenged to produce any Scriptural authority 
for this dogma, he cited the passage in which it is written 
that Shaclrach, Meshech and Abednego were thrown into 
the fiery furnace with their hats on ; and, if his own nar- 

* His Journal, before it was published, was revised by men of more 
sense and knowledge than himself, and therefore, absurd as it is, gives 
us no notion of his genuine style. The following is a fair specimen. 
It is the exordium of one of his manifestoes. " Them which the world 
who are without the fear of God calls Quakers in scorn do deny all 
opinions, and they do deny all conceivings, and they do deny all sects, 
and they do deny all imaginations, and notions, and judgments which 
riseth out of the will and the thoughts, and do deny witchcraft and all 
oaths, and the world, and the works of it, and their worships and their 
customs withthe light, and do deny false ways and false worships, se- 
ducers and deceivers, which are now seen to be in the world with the 
light, and with it they are condemned, which light leadeth to peace and 
life from death, which now thousands do witness the new teacher 
Christ, him by whom the world was made, who raigns among the chil- 
dren of light, and with the spirit and power of the living God, doth let 
them see and know the chaff from the wheat, and doth see that which 
must be shaken with that which cannot be shaken nor moved, what 
gives to see that which is shaken and moved, such as live in the no- 
tions, opinions, conceivings, and thoughts and fancies, these be all 
shaken and comes to be on heaps, which they who witness those things 
before mentioned shaken and removed walks in peace not seen and dis- 
cerned by them who walks in those things unremoved and not shaken." 
— A Warning to the World that are Groping in the Dark, bv G. Fox, 
1655. 

t See the piece entitled, Concerning Good morrow and Good even, 
the World's Customs, but by the Light which into the World is come 
by it made manifest to all who be in the Darkness, by G. Fox, 1657. 



256 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

rative may be trusted, the Chief Justice of England was 
altogether unable to answer this argument except by cry- 
ing out, " Take him away, gaoler." * Fox insisted much 
on the not less weighty argument that the Turks never 
show their bare heads to their superiors ; and he asked, 
with great animation, whether those who bore the noble 
name of Christians ought not to surpass Turks in virtue. t 
Bowing he strictly prohibited, and, indeed, seemed to con- 
sider it as the effect of Satanical influence ; for, as he ob- 
served, the woman in the gospel, while she had the spirit 
of infirmity, was bowed together, and ceased to bow as 
soon as Divine power had liberated her from the tyranny 
of the Evil One.J His expositions of the sacred writings 
were of a very peculiar kind. Passages, which had been, 
in the apprehension of all the readers of the Gospels dur- 
ing sixteen centuries, figurative, he construed literally. 
Passages, which no human being before him had ever un- 
derstood in any other than a literal sense, he construed 
figuratively. Thus, from those rhetorical expressions in 
which the duty of patience under injuries is enjoined, he 
deduced the doctrine that self-defence against pirates and 
assassins is unlawful. On the other hand, the plain com- 
mands to baptize with water, and to partake of bread and 
wine in commemoration of the redemption of mankind, he 
pronounced to be allegorical. He long w r andered from 
place to place, teaching this strange theology, shaking like 
an aspen leaf in his paroxysms of fanatical excitement, 
forcing his way into churches, which he nicknamed steeple 
houses, interrupting prayers and sermons with clamour and 
scurrility,§ and pestering rectors and justices with epistles 
much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in which 
the Hebrew prophets foretold the calamities of Babylon 
and Tyre. || He soon acquired great notoriety by these 

* Journal, page 166. 

f Epistle from Harlingen, 11th of 6th month, 1677. 

J Of Bowings, by G. Fox, 1567. 

§ See, for example, the Journal, pages 24, 26, and 51. 

I) See, for example, the Epistle to Sawkey, a justice of the peace, 
in the Journal, page 86 ; the Epistle to William Lampitt, a clergy- 
man, which begins, " The word of the Lord to thee, oh Lampitt," 
page 80 ; and the Epistle to another clergyman whom he calls Priest 
Tatham, page 92. 



GEOKGE EOX. 257 

feats. His strange face, his strange chant, his immovable 
hat and his leather breeches, were known all over the 
country ; and he boasts that, as soon as the rumour was 
heard, " The Man in Leather Breeches is coming," terror 
seized hypocritical professors, and hireling priests made 
haste to get out of his way.* He was repeatedly impris- 
oned and set in the stocks, sometimes justly, for disturb- 
ing the public worship of congregations, and sometimes 
unjustly, for merely talking nonsense. He soon gathered 
round him a body of disciples, some of whom went beyond 
himself in absurdity. He has told us that one of his 
friends walked naked through Skipton declaring the truth, f 
and that another was divinely moved to go naked during 
several years to market-places, and to the houses of gen- 
tlemen and clergymen. J Fox complains bitterly that 
these pious acts, prompted by the Holy Spirit, were re- 
quited by an untoward generation with hooting, pelting, 
coach- whipping, and horse-whipping. But, though he ap- 
plauded the zeal of the sufferers, he did not go quite to 
their lengths. He sometimes, indeed, was impelled to 
strip himself partially. Thus he pulled off his shoes and 
walked barefoot through Lichfield, crying, " Woe to the 
bloody city." § But it does not appear that he ever 
thought it his duty to appear before the public without 
that decent garment from which his appellation was de- 
rived. 

If we form our judgment of George Fox simply by 
looking at his own actions and writings, we shall see no 
reason for placing him, morally or intellectually, above 
Ludowick Muggleton or Joanna Southcote. But it would 
be most unjust to rank the sect which regards him as its 
founder with the Muggletonians or the Southcotians. It 
chanced that among the thousands whom his enthusiasm 
infected were a few persons whose abilities and attain- 
ments were of a very different order from his own. Eob- 
ert Barclay was a man of considerable parts and learn- 
ing. William Penn, though inferior to Barclay in both 
natural and acquired abilities, was a gentleman and a 

* Journal, page 55. + Ibid, page 300. 

J Ibid page. 323. § Ibid, page 48. 



258 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

scholar. That such men should have become the followers 
of George Fox, ought not to astonish any person who re- 
members what quick, vigorous and highly cultivated intel- 
lects were in our own time duped by the unknown tongues. 
The truth is, that no powers of mind constitute a security 
against errors of this description. Touching God and 
His ways with man, the highest human faculties can dis- 
cover little more than the meanest. In theology, the in- 
terval is small indeed between Aristotle and a child, be- 
tween Archimedes and a naked savage. It is not strange, 
therefore, that wise men, weary of investigation, tormented 
by uncertainty, longing to believe something, and yet see- 
ing objections to every thing, should submit themselves 
absolutely to teachers who, with firm and undoubting faith, 
lay claim to a supernatural commission. Thus we fre- 
quently see inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge from 
their own scepticism in the bosom of a church which pre- 
tends to infallibility, and, after questioning the existence 
of a Deity, bring themselves to worship a wafer. And 
thus it was that Fox made some converts to whom he was 
immeasurably inferior in every thing except the energy of 
his convictions. By these converts his rude doctrines were 
polished into a form somewhat less shocking to good sense 
and good taste. No proposition which he had laid down 
was retracted. No indecent or ridiculous act which he 
had done or approved was condemned : but what was most 
grossly absurd in his theories and practices was softened 
down, or at least not obtruded on the public : whatever 
could be made to appear specious was set in the fairest 
light : his gibberish was translated into English : mean- 
ings which he would have been quite unable to compre- 
hend were put on his phrases ; and his system, so much 
improved that he would not have known it again, was de- 
fended by numerous citations from Pagan philosophers and 
Christian fathers whose names he had never heard.* 

* " Especially of late," says Leslie, the keenest of all the enemies 
*)f the sect, " some of them have made nearer advances towards Chris- 
tianity than ever before ; and among them the ingenious Mr. Penn has 
of late refined some of their gross notions, and brought them into some 
form, and has made them speak sense and English, of both which 
George Fox, their first and great apostle, was totally ignorant. . . 



WILLIAM FULLER. 259 

Still, however, those who remodelled his theology contin- 
ued to profess, and doubtless to feel, profound reverence 
for him ; and his crazy epistles were to the last received 
and read with respect in Quaker meetings all over the 
country. His death produced a sensation which was not 
confined to his own disciples. On the morning of the 
funeral a great multitude assembled round the meeting- 
house in Gracechurch street. Thence the corpse was borne 
to the burial ground of the sect near Bunhill Fields. Sev- 
eral orators addressed the crowd which filled the cemetery. 
Penn was conspicuous among those disciples who commit- 
ted the venerable corpse to the earth. 



WILLIAM FULLEE. 

In 1689, and in the beginning of 1690, William Fuller 
had rendered to the government services such as the best 
governments sometimes require, and such as none but the 
worst men ever perform. His useful treachery had been 
rewarded by his employers, as was meet, with money and 
with contempt. Their liberality enabled him to live during 
some months like a fine gentleman. He called himself a 
Colonel, hired servants, clothed them in gorgeous liveries, 
bought fine horses, lodged in Pall Mall, and showed his 
brazen forehead, overtopped by a wig worth fifty guineas, 
in the ante-chambers of the palace and in the stage box 
at the theatre. He even gave himself the airs of a favor- 

They endeavour all they can to make it appear that their doctrine 
was uniform from the beginning, and that there has been no altera- 
tion ; and therefore they take upon them to defend all the writings of 
George Fox, and others of the first Quakers, and turn and wind them 
to make them (but it is impossible) agree with what they teach now 
at this day." (The Snake in the Grass, 3rd ed., 1698. Introduction.) 
Leslie was always more civil to his brother Jacobite Penn than to any 
other Quaker. Penn himself says of his master, " As abruptly and 
brokenly as sometimes his sentences would fall from him about divine 
things, it is well known they were often as texts to many fairer de- 
clarations." That is to say, George Fox talked nonsense, and somo 
of his friends paraphrased it into sense. 



260 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

ite of royalty, and, as if he thought that William could 
not live without him, followed His Majesty first to Ireland, 
and then to the Congress of Princes at the Hague. Ful- 
ler afterwards boasted that, at the Hague, he appeared 
with a retinue fit for an ambassador, that he gave ten 
guineas a week for an apartment, and that the worst 
waistcoat which he condescended to wear was of silver 
stuff at forty shillings the yard. Such profusion, of course, 
brought him to poverty. Soon after his return to England 
he took refuge from the bailiffs in Axe Yard, a place lying 
within the verge of Whitehall. His fortunes were despe- 
rate ; he owed great sums : on the government he had no 
claim : his past services had been overpaid : no future ser- 
vice was to be expected from him : having appeared 'in the 
witness-box as evidence for the Crown, he could no longer 
be of any use as a spy on the Jacobites ; and by all men of 
virtue and honour, to whatever party they might belong, he 
was abhorred and shunned. 

Just at this time, when he was in the frame of mind in 
which men are open to the worst temptations, he fell in 
with the worst of tempters, in truth, with the devil in hu- 
man shape. Gates had obtained his liberty, his pardon, 
and a pension which made him a much richer man than 
nineteen twentieths of the members of that profession of 
which he was the disgrace. But he was still unsatisfied. 
He complained that he had now less than three hundred a 
year. In the golden days of the Plot he had been allowed 
three times as much, had been sumptuously lodged in the 
palace, had dined on plate and had been clothed in silk. 
He clamoured for an increase of his stipend. Nay, he was 
even imprudent enough to aspire to ecclesiastical prefer- 
ment, and thought it hard that, while so many mitres were 
distributed, he could not get a deanery, a prebend, or even 
a living. He missed no opportunity of urging his preten- 
sions. He haunted the public offices and the lobbies of 
the Houses of Parliament. He might be seen and heard 
every day, hurrying, as fast as his uneven legs would carry 
him, between Charing Cross and Westminster Hall, puff- 
ing with haste and self-importance, chattering about what 
he had done for the good cause, and reviling, in the style 
of the boatmen on the river, all the statesmen and divines 



WILLIAM FULLER. 261 

whom lie suspected of doing him ill offices at Court, and 
keeping him back from a bishopric. When he found that 
there was no hope for him in the Established Church, he 
turned to the Baptists. They, at first, received him very 
coldly ; but he gave such touching accounts of the won- 
derful work of grace which had been wrought in his soul, 
and vowed so solemnly, before Jehovah and the holy 
angels, to be thenceforth a burning and shining light, that 
it was difficult for simple and well-meaning people to 
think him altogether insincere. He mourned, he said, like 
a turtle. On one Lord's day he thought he should have 
died of grief at being shut out from fellowship with the 
saints. He was at length admitted to communion : but 
before he had been a year among his new friends, they 
discovered his true character, and solemnly cast him out 
as a hypocrite. Thenceforth he became the mortal enemy 
of the leading Baptists, and persecuted them with the 
same treachery, the same mendacity, the same effrontery, 
the same black malice which had many years before 
wrought the destruction of more celebrated victims. Those 
who had lately been edified by his account of his blessed 
experiences, stood aghast to hear him crying out that he 
would be revenged, that revenge was God's own sweet 
morsel, that the wretches who had excommunicated him 
should be ruined, that they should be forced to fly their 
country, that they should be stripped to the last shilling. 
His designs were at length frustrated by a righteous de- 
cree of the Court of Chancery, a decree which would have 
left a deep stain on the character of an ordinary man, but 
which makes no perceptible addition to the infamy of 
Titus Oates.* Through all changes, however, he was sur- 
rounded by a small knot of hot-headed and foul-mouthed 
agitators, who, abhorred and despised by every respectable 
Whig, yet called themselves Whigs, and thought them- 
selves injured because they were not rewarded for scur- 
rility and slander with the best places under the Crown. 
In 1691, Titus, in order to be near the focal point of 
political intrigue and faction, had taken a house within 

* North's Examen ; Ward's London Spy ; Crosby's English Bap- 
tists, vol. hi. chap. 2. 



262 MAC AUL ay's miscellaneous writings. 

the precinct of Whitehall. To this house Fuller, who 
lived hard by, found admission. The evil work which had 
been begun in him, when he was still a child, by the me- 
moirs of Dangerfield, was now completed by the conversa- 
tion of Oates. The Salamanca Doctor was, as a witness, ■ 
no longer formidable ; but he was impelled, partly by the 
savage malignity which he felt towards all whom he con- 
sidered as his enemies, and partly by mere monkey-like 
restlessness and love of mischief, to do, through the in- 
strumentality of others, what he could no longer do in per- 
son. In Fuller he had found the corrupt heart, the ready 
tongue, and the unabashed front, which are the first quali- 
fications for the office of a false accuser. A friendship, if 
that word may be so used, sprang up between the pair. 
Oates opened his house and even his purse to Fuller. The 
veteran sinner, both directly and through the agency of 
his dependents, intimated to the novice that nothing made 
a man so important as the discovering of a plot, and that 
these were times when a young fellow who would stick at 
nothing and fear nobody might do wonders. The Revolu- 
tion, — such was the language constantly held by Titus, 
and his parasites, — had produced little good. The brisk 
boys of Shaftesbury had not been recompensed according 
to their merits. Even the Doctor, such was the ingrati- 
tude of men, was looked on coldly at the new Court. Tory 
rogues sate at the council board, and were admitted to the 
royal closet. It would be a noble feat to bring their necks 
to the block. Above all, it would be delightful to see 
Nottingham's long solemn face on Tower Hill. For the 
hatred with which these bad men regarded Nottingham 
had no bounds, and was probably excited less by his polit- 
ical opinions, in which there was doubtless much to con- 
demn, than by his moral character, in which the closest 
scrutiny will detect little that is not deserving of appro- 
bation. Oates, with the authority which experience and 
success entitle a preceptor to assume, read his pupil a lec- 
ture on the art of bearing false witness. " You ought," 
he said, with many oaths and curses, " to have made more, 
much more, out of what you heard and saw at Saint Ger- 
mains. Never was there a finer foundation for a plot. 
But you are a fool : you are a coxcomb : I could beat you : 



WILLIAM FULLER. 263 

I would not have done so. I used to go to Charles and 
tell him his own. I called Lauderdale rogue to his face. 
I made King, Ministers, Lords, Commons, afraid of me. 
But you young men have no spirit." Fuller w T as greatly 
edified by these exhortations. It was, however, hinted to 
him by some of his associates that, if he meant to take 
up the trade of swearing away lives, he would do well not 
to show himself so often at coffee-houses in the company 
of Titus. " The Doctor," said one of the gang, " is an 
excellent person, and has done great things in his time : 
but many people are prejudiced against him ; and, if you 
are really going to discover a plot, the less you are seen 
with him the better." Fuller accordingly ceased to fre- 
quent Oates's house, but still continued to receive his great 
master's instructions in private. 

To do Fuller justice, he seems not to have taken up 
the trade of a false witness till he could no longer support 
himself by begging or swindling. He lived for a time on 
the charity of the Queen. He then levied contributions 
by pretending to be one of the noble family of Sidney. 
He wheedled Tillotson out of some money, and requited 
the good Archbishop's kindness by passing himself off as 
His Grace's favourite nephew. But in the autumn of 
1691 all these shifts were exhausted. After lying in sev- 
eral spunging houses, Fuller was at length lodged in the 
King's Bench prison, and he now thought it time to an- 
nounce that he had discovered a plot.* 

He addressed himself first to Tillotson and Portland : 
but both Tillotson and Portland soon perceived that he 
was lying. What he said was, however, reported to the 
King, who, as might have been expected, treated the in- 
formation and the informant with cold contempt. All 
that remained was to try whether a flame could be raised 
in the Parliament. 

Soon after the Houses met, Fuller petitioned the Com- 
mons to hear what he had to say, and promised to make 
wonderful disclosures. He was brought from his prison to 
the bar of the House ; and he there repeated a long ro- 

* The history of this part of Fuller's Life I have taken from his 
own narrative. 



264 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

mance. James, lie said, had delegated the regal author- 
ity to six commissioners, of whom Halifax was first. More 
than fifty lords and gentlemen had signed an address to 
the French King, imploring him to make a great effort for 
the restoration of the House of Stuart. Fuller declared 
that he had seen this address, and recounted many of the 
names appended to it. Some members made severe re- 
marks on the improbability of the story, and on the char- 
acter of the witness. He was, they said, one of the great- 
est rogues on the face of the earth ; and he told such 
things as could scarcely be credited if he were an angel 
from heaven. Fuller audaciously pledged himself to bring 
proofs which would satisfy the most incredulous. He was, 
he averred, in communication with some agents of James. 
Those persons were ready to make reparation to their 
country. Their testimony would be decisive ; for they 
were in possession of documentary evidence which would 
confound the guilty. They held back only because they 
saw some of the traitors high in office and near the royal 
person, and were afraid of incurring the enmity of men so 
powerful and so wicked. Fuller ended by asking for a 
sum of money, and by assuring the Commons that he 
would lay it out to good account.* Had his impudent re- 
quest been granted, he would probably have paid his debts, 
obtained his liberty, and absconded : but the House very 
wisely insisted on seeing his witnesses first. He then be- 
gan to shuffle. The gentlemen were on the Continent, 
and could not come over without passports. Passports 
were delivered to him : but he complained that they were 
insufficient. At length the Commons, fully determined to 
get at the truth, presented an address requesting the King 
to send Fuller a blank safe conduct in the largest terms. f 
The safe conduct was sent. Six weeks passed, and noth- 
ing was heard of the witnesses. The friends of the lords 
and gentlemen who had been accused represented strongly 
that the House ought not to separate for the summer with- 
out coming to some decision on charges so grave. Fuller 
was ordered to attend. He pleaded sickness, and assert- 

* Common's Journals, Dec. 2 and 9, 1691 ; Grey's Debates. 
f Commons' Journals, Jan. 4, 1691-2 ; Grey's Debates, 



WILLIAM FULLER. 265 

ed, not for the first time, that the Jacobites had poisoned 
him. But all his plans were confounded by the laudable 
promptitude and vigour with which the Commons acted. 
A Committee was sent to his bedside, with orders to ascer- 
tain whether he really had any witnesses, and where those 
witnesses resided. The members who were deputed for 
this purpose went to the King's Bench prison, and found 
him suffering under a disorder, produced, in all probabil- 
ity, by some emetic which he had swallowed for the pur- 
pose of deceiving them. In answer to their questions, he 
said that two of his witnesses, Delaval and Hayes, were 
in England, and were lodged in the house of a Eoman 
Catholic apothecary in Holborn. The Commons, as soon 
as the Committee had reported, sent some members to the 
house which he had indicated. That house and all the 
neighbouring houses were searched. Delaval and Hayes 
were not to be found, nor had any body in the vicinity 
ever seen 6uch men or heard of them. The House, there- 
fore, on the last day of the session, just before the Black 
Eod knocked at the door, unanimously resolved that Wil- 
liam Fuller was a cheat and a false accuser ; that he had 
insulted the Government and the Parliament ; that he had 
calumniated honourable men, and that an address should 
be carried up to the throne, requesting that he might be 
prosecuted for his villany.* He was consequently tried, 
convicted, sentenced to fine, imprisonment and the pillory. 
The exposure, more terrible than death to a mind not lost 
to all sense of shame, he underwent with a hardihood wor- 
thy of his two favourite models, Dangerfield and Oates. 
He had the impudence to persist, year after year, in 
arErming that he had fallen a victim to the machinations 
of the late King, who had spent six thousand pounds in 
order to ruin him. Delaval and Hayes — so this fable ran 
— had been instructed by James in person. They had, in 
obedience to his orders, induced Fuller to pledge his word 
for their appearance, and had then absented themselves, 
and left him exposed to the resentment of the House of 
Commons.f The story had the reception which it de- 

* Commons' Journals, Feb. 22, 23 and 24, 1691-2. 
f Fuller's Original Letters of the late King James and others to 
his greatest Friends in England. 

12 



266 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

served, and Fuller sank into an obscurity from which, he 
twice or thrice, at long intervals, again emerged for a mo- 
ment into infamy. 



JOHN EAEL OF BKEADALBANE. 

John Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a younger branch 
of the great house of Campbell, ranked high among the 
petty princes of the mountains. He could bring seven- 
teen hundred claymores into the field ; and ten years be- 
fore the Kevolution, he had actually marched into the Low- 
lands with this great force, for the purpose of supporting 
the prelatical tyranny.* In those days he had affected 
zeal for monarchy and episcopacy ; but in truth he cared 
for no government and no religion. He seems to have 
united two different sets of vices, the growth of two differ- 
ent regions, and of two different stages in the progress of 
society. In his castle among the hills he had learned the 
barbarian pride and ferocity of a Highland chief. In the 
Council Chamber at Edinburgh he had contracted the 
deep taint of treachery and corruption. After the Kevo- 
lution he had, like too many of his fellow nobles, joined 
and betrayed every party in turn, had sworn fealty to 
William and Mary, and had plotted against them. To 
trace all the turns and doublings of his course, during the 
year 1689 and the earlier part of 1690, would be weari- 
some, f That course became somewhat less tortuous when 
the battle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the Jaco- 
bites. It now seemed probable that the Earl would be a 
loyal subject of their Majesties, till some great disaster 
should befall them. Nobody who knew him could trust 
him : but few Scottish statesmen could then be trusted ; 
and yet Scottish statesmen must be employed. His posi- 

* Burnet, i. 418. 

f Crawford to Melville, July 23, 1689 ; The master of Stair to 
Melville, Aug. 16, 1689 ; Cardross to Melville, Sept. 9, 1689 ; Balcar- 
ras's Memoirs; Annandale's Confession, Aug. 14, 1690. 



JOHN, EAKL OF BEEADALBANE. 267 

tion and connections marked him out as a man who might, 
if he would, do much towards the work of quieting the 
Highlands ; and his interest seemed to be a guarantee for 
his zeal. He had, as he declared with every appearance 
of truth, strong personal reasons for wishing to see tran- 
quillity restored. His domains were so situated that, 
while the civil war lasted, his vassals could not tend their 
herds or sow their oats in peace. His lands were daily 
ravaged : his cattle were daily driven away : one of his 
houses had been burned down. It was probable, there- 
fore, that he would do his best to put an end to hostili- 
ties.* 

He was accordingly commissioned to treat with the Jaco- 
bite chiefs, and was entrusted with the money which was to 
be distributed among them. He invited them to a confer- 
ence at his residence in Glenorchy. They came : but the 
treaty went on very slowly. Every head of a tribe asked for 
a larger share of the English gold than was to be obtained. 
Breadalbane was suspected of intending to cheat both the 
clans and the King. The dispute between the rebels and 
the government was complicated with another dispute still 
more embarrassing. The Camerons and Macdonalds were 
really at war, not with William, but with Mac Callum 
More ; and no arrangement to which Mac Callum More 
was not a party could really produce tranquillity. A grave 
question therefore arose whether the money entrusted to 
Breadalbane should be paid directly to the discontented 
chiefs, or should be employed to satisfy the claims which 
Argyle had upon them. The shrewdness of Lochiel and 
the arrrogant pretensions of Glengarry contributed to pro- 
tract the discussions. But no Celtic potentate was so im- 
practicable as Macdonald of Glencoe, known among the 
mountains by the hereditary appellation of Mac Ian.f 

* Breadalbane to Melville, Sept. 17, 1690. 

f The Master of Stair to Hamilton, Aug. 17-27, 1691 : Hill to 
Melville, June 26, 1691; The Master of Stair to Breadalbane, Aug. 
24, 1691 



268 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 



KOBEKT YOUNG. 

The exposure of Fuller, in February, had, as it seemed, 
put an end to the practices of that vile tribe of which 
Oates was the patriarch. During some weeks, indeed, the 
world was disposed to be unreasonably incredulous about 
plots. But in April there was a reaction. The French 
and Irish were coming. There was but too much reason 
to believe that there were traitors in the island. Whoever 
pretended that he could point out those traitors, was sure 
to be heard with attention ; and there was not wanting a 
false witness to avail himself of the golden opportunity. 

This false witness was named Kobert Young. His his- 
tory was in his own lifetime so fully investigated, and so 
much of his correspondence has been preserved, that the 
whole man is before us. His character is indeed a curious 
study. His birthplace was a subject of dispute among 
three nations. The English pronounced him Irish. The 
Irish, not being ambitious of the honour of having him for 
a countryman, affirmed that he was born in Scotland. 
Wherever he may have been born, it is impossible to doubt 
where he was bred ; for his phraseology is precisely that 
of the Teagues who were, in his time, favourite characters 
on our stage. He called himself a priest of the Estab- 
lished Church : but he was in truth only a deacon ; and 
his deacon's orders he had obtained by producing forged 
certificates of his learning and moral character. Long 
before the Eevolution he held curacies in various parts in 
Ireland ; but he did not remain many days in any spot. 
He was driven from one place by the scandal which was 
the effect of his lawless amours. He rode away from an- 
other place on a borrowed horse, which he never returned. 
He settled in a third parish, and was taken up for bigamy. 
Some letters which he wrote on this occasion from the 
gaol of Cavan have been preserved. He assured each of 
his wives, with the most frightful imprecations, that she 
alone was the object of his love ; and he thus succeeded in 
inducing one of them to support him in prison, and the 
other to save his life by forswearing herself at the assizes 



ROBEBT YOUNG. 269 

The only specimens which remain to us of his method of 
imparting religious instruction, are to be found in these 
epistles. He compares himself to David, the man after 
God's own heart, who had been guilty both of adultery 
and murder. He declares that he repents : he prays for 
the forgiveness of the Almighty, and then entreats his 
dear honey, for Christ's sake, to perjure herself. Having 
narrowly escaped the gallows, he wandered during several 
years about Ireland and England, begging, stealing, cheat- 
ing, sonating, forging, and lay in many prisons under 
many names. In 1684 he was convicted at Bury of hav- 
ing fraudulently counterfeited Bancroft's signature, and 
was sentenced to the pillory and to imprisonment. From 
his dungeon he wrote to implore the Primate's mercy. 
The letter may still be read with all the original bad 
grammar and bad spelling.* That the writer acknow- 
ledged his guilt, wished that his eyes were a fountain of 
water, declared that he should never know peace till he 
had received episcopal absolution, and professed a mortal 
hatred of Dissenters. As all this contrition and all this 
orthodoxy produced no effect, the penitent, after swearing 
bitterly to be revenged on Sancroft, betook himself to 
another device. The Western Insurrection had just broken 
out. The magistrates all over the country were but too 
ready to listen to any accusation that might be brought 
against Whigs and Nonconformists. Young declared on 
oath that, to his knowledge, a design had been formed in 
Suffolk against the life of King James, and named a peer, 
several gentlemen, and ten Presbyterian ministers, as par- 
ties to the plot. Some of the accused were brought to 
trial ; and Young appeared in the witness box : but the 
story which he told was proved by overwhelming evidence 
to be false. Soon after the Eevolution he was again con- 
victed of forgery, pilloried for the fourth or fifth time, and 
sent to Newgate. While he lay there, he determined to 
try whether he should be more fortunate as an accuser of 
Jacobites than he had been as an accuser of Puritans. He 
first addressed himself to Tillotson. There was a horri- 



* I give one short sentence as a specimen : " fie that ever it 
should be said that a clergyman have committed such durty actions." 



270 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

ble plot against their Majesties, a plot as deep as hell ; 
and some of the first men in England were concerned in 
it. Tillotson, though he placed little confidence in infor- 
mation coming from such a source, thought that the oath 
which he had taken as a Privy Councillor made it his duty 
to mention the subject to William. William, after his 
fashion, treated the matter very lightly. " I am confi- 
dent," he said, "that this is a villany; and I will have 
nobody disturbed on such grounds." After this rebuff, 
Young remained some time quiet. But when William was 
on the Continent, and when the nation was agitated by 
the apprehension of a French invasion and of a Jacobite 
insurrection, a false accuser might hope to obtain a favour- 
able audience. The mere oath of a man who was well 
known to the turnkeys of twenty gaols, was not likely to 
injure any body. But Young was master of a weapon 
which is, of all weapons, the most formidable to innocence. 
He had lived during some years by counterfeiting hands, 
and had at length attained such consummate skill in that 
bad art, that even experienced clerks who were conversant 
with manuscript, could scarcely, after the most minute 
comparison, discover any difference between his imitations 
and the orginals. He had succeeded in making a collec- 
tion of papers written by men of note who were suspected 
of disaffection. Some autographs he had stolen ; and 
some he had obtained by writing in feigned names to ask 
after the characters of servants or curates. He now drew 
up a paper purporting to be an Association for the Kesto- 
ration of the banished King. This document set forth 
that the subscribers bound themselves in the presence of 
God to take arms for His Majesty, and to seize on the 
Prince of Orange, dead or alive. To the Association, 
Young appended the names of Marlborough, of Cornbury, 
of Salisbury, of Sancroft, and of Sprat, Bishop of Koches- 
ter and Dean of Westminster. 

The next thing to be done was to put the paper in 
some hiding-place into the house of one of the persons 
whose signatures had been counterfeited. As Young could 
not quit Newgate, he was forced to employ a subordinate 
agent for this purpose. He selected a wretch named 
Blackhead, who had formerly been convicted of perjury, 



EOBEET TOUKG. 271 

and sentenced to have his ears clipped. The selection 
was not happy ; for Blackhead had none of the qualities 
which the trade of a false witness requires except wicked- 
ness. There was nothing plausible about him. His voice 
was harsh. Treachery was written in all the lines of his 
yellow face. He had no invention, no presence of mind, 
and could do little more than repeat by rote the lies taught 
him by others. 

This man, instructed by his accomplice, repaired to 
Sprat's palace at Bromley, introduced himself there as the 
confidential servant of an imaginary Doctor of Divinity, 
delivered to the Bishop, on bended knee, a letter ingen- 
iously manufactured by Young, and received, ] with the 
semblance of profound reverence, the episcopal benedic- 
tion. The servants made the stranger welcome. He was 
taken to the cellar, drank their master's health, and en- 
treated them to let him see the house. They could not 
venture to show any of the private apartments. Black- 
head, therefore, after begging importunately, but in vain, 
to be suffered to have one look at the study, was forced to 
content himself w r ith dropping the Association into a 
flowerpot which stood in a parlour near the kitchen. 

Every thing having been thus prepared, Young in- 
formed the ministers that he could tell them something of 
the highest importance to the welfare of the State, and 
earnestly begged to be heard. His request reached them 
on perhaps the most anxious day of an anxious month. 
Tourville had just stood out to sea. The army of James 
was embarking. London was agitated by reports about 
the disaffection of the naval officers. The Queen was de- 
liberating whether she should cashier those who were sus- 
pected, or try the effect of an appeal to their honour and 
patriotism. At such a moment the ministers could not 
refuse to listen to any person who professed himself able 
to give them valuable information. Young and his accom- 
plice were brought before the Privy Council. They there 
accused Marlborough, Cornbury, Salisbury, Sancroft and 
Sprat of high treaon. These great men, Young said, had 
invited James to invade England, and had promised to 
join him. The eloquent and ingenious Bishop of Eoches- 
ter had undertaken to draw up a Declaration which would 



272 macaulay's miscellaneous wKrnxGS. 

inflame the nation against the government of King Wil- 
liam. The conspirators were bound together by a written 
instrument. That instrument, signed by their own hands, 
would be found at Bromley if careful search was made. 
Young particularly requested that the messengers might 
be ordered to examine the Bishop's flowerpots. 

The ministers were seriously alarmed. The story was 
circumstantial ; and part of it was probable. Marlbo- 
rough's dealings with St. Germains were well known to 
Caermarthen, to Nottingham and to Sidney. Cornbury 
was a tool of Marlborough, and was the son of a nonjuror 
and of a notorious plotter. Salisbury was a Papist. San- 
croft had, not many months before, been, with too much 
show of reason, suspected of inviting the French to invade 
England. Of all the accused persons, Sprat was the most 
unlikely to be concerned in any hazardous design. He 
had neither enthusiasm nor constancy. Both his ambition 
and his party spirit had always been effectually kept in 
order by his love of ease and his anxiety for his own safe- 
ty. He had been guilty of some criminal compliances in 
the hope of gaining the favour of James, had sate in the 
High Commission, had concurred in several iniquitous de- 
crees pronounced by that court, and had, with trembling 
hands and faltering voice, read the Declaration of Indul- 
gence in the choir of the Abbey. But there he had 
stopped. As soon as it began to be whispered that the 
civil and religious constitution of England would speedily 
be vindicated by extraordinary means, he had resigned the 
powers which he had during two years exercised in defi- 
ance of law, and had hastened to make his peace with his 
clerical brethren. He had in the Convention voted for a 
Eegency : but he had taken the oaths without hesitation ; 
he had borne a conspicuous part in the coronation of the 
new Sovereigns ; and by his skilful hand had been added 
to the Form of Prayer used on the Fifth of November, 
those sentences in which the Church expresses her grati- 
tude for the second great deliverance wrought on that 
day* Such a man, possessed of a plentiful income, of a 
Beat in the House of Lords, of one agreeable house among 

* Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa. 



KOBERT YOUNG. 273 

the elms of Bromley, and of another in the cloisters of 
Westminster, was very unlikely to run the risk of martyr- 
dom. He was not, indeed, on perfectly good terms with 
the government. For the feeling which, next to solicitude 
for his own comfort and repose, seems to have had the 
greatest influence on his public conduct, was his dislike of 
the Puritans ; a dislike which sprang, not from bigotry, 
but from Epicureanism. Their austerity was a reproach 
to his slothful and luxurious life : their phraseology shocked 
his fastidious taste ; and, where they were concerned, his 
ordinary good nature forsook him. Loathing the Noncon- 
formists as he did, he was not likely to be very zealous for 
a prince whom the Nonconformists regarded as their pro- 
tector. But Sprat's faults afforded ample security that he 
would never, from spleen against William, engage in any 
plot to bring back James. Why Young should have as- 
signed the most perilous part in an enterprise full of peril 
to a man singularly pliant, cautious and self-indulgent, it 
is difficult to say. 

The first step which the ministers took was to send 
Marlborough to the Tower. He was by far the most for- 
midable of all the accused persons ; and that he had held 
a traitorous correspondence with Saint Germains, was a 
fact which, whether Young were perjured or not, the Queen 
and her chief advisers knew to be true. One of the Clerks 
of the Council and several messengers were sent down to 
Bromley with a warrant from Nottingham. Sprat was 
taken into custody. All the apartments in which it could 
reasonably be supposed that he would have hidden an im- 
portant document, were searched, the library, the dining- 
room, the drawing-room, the bed-chamber, and the adja- 
cent closets. His papers were strictly examined. Much 
good prose was found, and probably some bad verse, but 
no treason. The messengers pried into every flowerpot 
that they could find, but to no purpose. It never occurred 
to them to look into the room in which Blackhead had 
hidden the Association : for that room was near the offices 
occupied by the servants, and was little used by the Bish- 
op and his family. The officers returned to London with 
their prisoner, but without the document which, if it had 
been found, might have been fatal to him. 
12* 



274 MACAULAY'S MISCELLAOTiOUS WRITINGS. 

Late at night he was brought to Westminster, and was 
suffered to sleep at his deanery. All his bookcases and 
drawers were examined ; and sentinels were posted at the 
door of his bed-chamber, but with strict orders to behave 
civilly, and not to disturb the family. 

On the following day he was brought before the Coun- 
cil. The examination was conducted by Nottingham with 
great humanity and courtesy. The Bishop, conscious of 
entire innocence, behaved with temper and firmness. He 
made no complaints. " I submit," he said, " to the neces- 
sities of State in such a time of jealousy and danger as 
this." He was asked whether he had drawn up a Declara- 
tion for King James, whether he had held any correspond- 
ence with France, whether he had signed any treasonable 
association, and whether he knew of any such association. 
To all these questions he, with perfect truth, answered in 
the negative, on the word of a Christian and a Bishop. 
He was taken back to his deanery. He remained there 
in easy confinement during ten days, and then, as nothing 
tending to criminate him had been discovered, was suffered 
to return to Bromley. 

Meanwhile the false accusers had been devising a new 
scheme. Blackhead paid another visit to Bromley, and 
contrived to take the forged Association out of the place 
in which he had hid it, and to bring it back to Young. 
One of Young's two wives then carried it to the Secre- 
tary's Office, and told a lie, invented by her husband, to 
explain how a paper of such importance had come into her 
hands. But it was not now so easy to frighten the minis- 
ters as it had been a few days before. The battle of La 
Hogue had put an end to all apprehensions of invasion. 
Nottingham, therefore, instead of sending down a warrant 
to Bromley, merely wrote to beg that Sprat would call on 
him at Whitehall. The summons was promptly obeyed, 
and the accused prelate was brought face to face with 
Blackhead before the Council. Then the truth came out 
fast. The Bishop remembered the villainous look and 
voice of the man who had knelt to ask the episcopal bless- 
ing. The Bishop's Secretary confirmed his master's asser- 
tions. The false witness soon lost his presence of mind. 
His cheeks, always sallow, grew frightfully livid. His 



ROBERT YOUNG. 275 

voice, generally loud and coarse, sank into a whisper. 
The Privy Councillors saw his confusion, and cross-exam- 
ined him sharply. For a time he answered their questions 
by repeatedly stammering out his original lie in the origi- 
nal words. At last he found that he had no way of extri- 
cating himself but by owning his guilt. He acknowledged 
that he had given an untrue account of his visit to Brom- 
ley ; and, after much prevarication, he related how he had 
hidden the Association, and how he had removed it from 
it shicling-place, and confessed that he had been set on 
by Young. 

The two accomplices were then confronted. Young, 
with unabashed forehead, denied every thing. He knew 
nothing about the flowerpots. " If so," cried Nottingham 
and Sidney together, " why did you give such particular 
directions that the flowerpots at Bromley should be 
searched % " "I never gave any directions about the 
flowerpots," said Young. Then the whole board broke 
forth : " How dare you say so ? We all remember it." 
Still the knave stood up erect, and exclaimed, with an im- 
pudence which Oates might have envied, " This hiding is 
all a trick got up between the Bishop and Blackhead. 
The Bishop has taken Blackhead off; and they are both 
trying to stifle the plot." This was too much. There was 
a smile and a lifting up of hands all round the board. 
" Man," cried Caermarthen, " wouldst thou have us believe 
that the Bishop contrived to have this paper put where it 
was ten to one that our messengers had found it, and 
where, if they had found it, it might have hanged him % " 

The false accusers were removed in custody. The 
Bishop, after warmly thanking the ministers for their fair 
and honourable conduct, took his leave of them. In the 
antechamber he found a crowd of .people staring at Young, 
while Young sate, enduring the stare with the serene for- 
titude of a man who had looked down on far greater multi- 
tudes from half the pillories in England. " Young," said 
Sprat, " your conscience must tell you that you have cru- 
elly wronged me. For your own sake I am sorry that you 
persist in denying what your associate has confessed." 
" Confessed ! " cried Young ; " no, all is not confessed 
yet; and that you shall find to your sorrow. There 



276 macatjlay's miscellaneous writings. 

is such a thing as impeachment my Lord. When Parlia- 
ment sits you shall hear more of me." " God give you 
repentance," answered the Bishop. " For, depend upon 
it, you are in much more danger of being damned, than I 
of being impeached." * 

Forty-eight hours after the detection of this execrable 
fraud, Marlborough was admitted to bail. Young and 
Blackhead had done him an inestimable service. That he 
was concerned in a plot quite as criminal as that which 
they had falsely imputed to him, and that the government 
was in possession of moral proofs of his guilt, is now cer- 
tain. But his contemporaries had not, as we have, the 
evidence of his perfidy before them. They knew that he 
had been accused of an offense of which he was innocent, 
that perjury and forgery had been employed to ruin him, 
and that, in consequence of these machinations, he had 
passed some weeks in the Tower. There was in the pub- 
lic mind a very natural confusion between his disgrace and 
his imprisonment. He had been imprisoned without suffi- 
cient cause. Might it not, in the absence of all informa- 
tion, be reasonably presumed that he had been disgraced 
without sufficient cause % It was certain that a vile calum- 
ny, destitute of all foundation, had caused him to be 
treated as a criminal in May. Was it not probable, then, 
that calumny might have deprived him of his master's 
favour in January ? 

Young's resources were not yet exhausted. As soon 
as he had been carried back from Whitehall to Newgate, 
he set himself to construct a new plot, and to find a new 
accomplice. He addressed himself to a man named Hol- 
land, who was in the lowest state of poverty. Never, said 
Young, was there such a golden opportunity. A bold, 
shrewd fellow, might easily earn five hundred pounds. To 
Holland five hundred pounds seemed fabulous wealth. 
'What, he asked, was he to to do for it? Nothing, he was 
told, but to speak the truth, that was to say, substantial 
truth, a little disguised and coloured. There really was a 

* My account of this plot is chiefly taken from Sprat's Revelation 
of the late Wicked Contrivance of Stephen Blackhead and Robert 
Young, 1692. There are very few better narratives in the language. 



ROBERT YOUNG. 211 

plot ; and this would have been proved if Blackhead had 
not been bought off. His desertion had made it necessary 
to call in the help of fiction. " You must swear that you 
and I were in a back room up-stairs at the Lobster in 
Southwark. Some men came to meet us there. They 
gave a password before they were admitted. They were 
all in white camlet cloaks. They signed the Association 
in our presence. Then they paid each his shilling, and 
went away. And you must be ready to identify my Lord 
Marlborough and the Bishop of Bochester as two of these 
men.'' " How can I identify them % " said Holland, " I 
never saw them." " You must contrive to see them," an- 
swered the tempter, " as soon as you can. The Bishop 
will be at the Abbey. Anybody about the court will point 
out my Lord Marlborough." Holland immediately went 
to Whitehall, and repeated this conversation to Notting- 
ham. The unlucky imitator of Oates was prosecuted, by 
order of the government, for perjury, subornation of per- 
jury, and forgery. He was convicted and imprisoned, was 
again set in the pillory, and underwent, in addition to the 
exposure, about which he cared little, such a pelting as 
had seldom been known.* After his punishment, he was, 
during some years, lost in the crowd of pilferers, ring- 
droppers and sharpers who infested the capital. At 
length, in the year 1700, he emerged from his obscurity, 
and excited a momentary interest. The newspapers an- 
nounced that Bobert Young, Clerk, once so famous, had 
been taken up for coining, then that he had been found 
guilty, then that the dead warrant had come down, and 
finally that the reverend gentleman had been hanged at 
Tyburn, and had greatly edified a large assembly of spec- 
tators by his penitenco.f 

* Baden to the States General, Feb. 14-24, 1693. 
t Postman, April 13 and 20, 1700 ; Postboy, April 18 ; Flying 
Post, April 20. 



278 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 



GKANDVAL. 

A plot against the life of William had been, during some 
months, maturing in the French War Office. It should 
seem that Louvois had originally sketched the design, and 
had bequeathed it, still rude, to his son and successor 
Barbesieux. By Barbesieux the plan was perfected. The 
execution was entrusted to an officer named Grandval. 
Grandval was undoubtedly brave, and full of zeal for his 
country and his religion. He was indeed flighty and half- 
witted, but not on that account the less dangerous. In- 
deed, a flighty and half-witted man is the very instrument 
generally preferred by cunning politicians when very haz- 
ardous work is to be done. No shrewd calculator would, 
for any bribe, however enormous, have exposed himself to 
the fate of Chatel, of Kavallac, or of Gerarts.* 

Grandval secured, as he conceived, the assistance of 
two adventurers, Dumont, and Walloon, and Leefdale, a 
Dutchman. In April, soon after William had arrived in 
the Low Countries, the murderers were directed to repair 
to their post. Dumont was then in Westphalia. Grand- 
val and Leefdale were at Paris. Uden in North Brabant 
was fixed as the place where the three were to meet, 
and whence they were to proceed together to the head- 
quarters of the allies. Before Grandval left Paris, he paid 
a visit to Saint Germains, and was presented to James 
and to Mary of Modena. " I have been informed," said 
James, " of the business. If you and your companions do 
me this service, you shall never want." 

After this audience Grandval set out on his journey. 
He had not the faintest suspicion that he had been be- 
trayed both by the accomplice who accompanied him and 
by the accomplice whom he was going to meet. Dumont 
and Leefdale were not enthusiasts. They cared nothing 
for the restoration of James, the grandeur of Lewis, or 



* Langhorne, the chief lay agent of the Jesuits in England, always, 
as he owned to Tillotson, selected tools on this principle. Burnet, i. 
230. 



GKANDYAL. 279 

the ascendency of the Church of Kome. It was plain to 
every man of common sense that, whether the design suc- 
ceeded or failed, the reward of the assassins would proba- 
bly be to be disowned, with affected abhorrence, by the 
Courts of Versailles and Saint Germains, and to be torn 
with red-hot pincers, smeared with melted lead, and dis- 
membered by four horses. To vulgar natures the pros- 
pect of such a martyrdom was not alluring. Both these 
men, therefore, had, almost at the same time, though, as 
far as appears, without any concert, conveyed to William, 
through different channels, warnings that his life was in 
danger. Dumont had acknowledged every thing to the 
Duke of Zell, one of the confederate princes. Leefdale 
had transmitted full intelligence through his relations who 
resided in Holland. Meanwhile Morell, a Swiss Protes- 
tant of great learning, who was then in France, wrote to 
inform Burnet that the weak and hot-headed Grandval 
had been heard to talk boastfully of the event which would 
soon astonish the world, and had confidently predicted 
that the Prince of Orange would not live to the end of the 
next month. 

These cautions were not neglected. From the moment 
at which Grandval entered the Netherlands, his steps were 
among snares. His movements were watched : his words 
were noted : he was arrested, examined, confronted with 
his accomplices, and sent to the camp of the allies. About 
a week after the battle of Steinkirk he was brought before 
a Court Martial. Ginkell, who had been rewarded for his 
great services in Ireland with the title of Earl of Ath- 
lone, presided; and Talmash was among the judges. 
Mackay and Lanier had been named members of the 
board : but they were no more : and their places were 
filled by younger officers. 

The duty of the Court Martial was very simple : for 
the prisoner attempted no defence. His conscience had, it 
should seem, been suddenly awakened. He admitted, 
with expressions of remorse, the truth of all the charges, 
made a minute, and apparently an ingenuous confession, 
and owned that he had deserved death. He was sentenced 
to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and underwent his 
punishment with great fortitude End with a show of piety. 



280 MACATOAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

He left behind him a few lines, in which he declared that 
he was about to lose his life for having too faithfully obeyed 
the injunctions of Barbesieux. 

His confession was immediately published in several 
languages, and was read with very various and very strong 
emotions : that it was genuine, could not be doubted, for 
it was warranted by the signatures of some of the most 
distinguished military men living. That it was prompted 
by the hope of pardon, could hardly be supposed: for 
William had taken pains to discourage that hope. Still 
less could it be supposed that the prisoner had uttered un- 
truths in order to avoid the torture. For, though it was 
the universal practice in the Netherlands to put convicted 
assassins to the rack in order to wring out from them the 
names of their employers and associates, William had 
given orders that, on this occasion, the rack should not be 
used or even named. It should be added, that the Court 
did not interrogate the prisoner closely, but suffered him 
to tell his story in his own way. It is therefore reason- 
able to believe that his narrative is substantially true ; 
and no part of it has a stronger air of truth than his ac- 
count of the audience with which James had honoured 
him at Saint Germains. 

In our island the sensation produced by the news was 
great. The Whigs loudly called both James and Lewis 
assassins. How, it was asked, was it possible, without 
outraging common sense, to put an innocent meaning on 
the words which Grandval declared that he had heard from 
the lips of the banished King of England 1 And who 
that knew the Court of Versailles would believe that Bar- 
besieux, a youth, a mere notice in politics, and rather a 
clerk than a minister, would have dared to do what he had 
done without taking his master's pleasure 1 Very charita- 
ble and very ignorant persons might perhaps indulge a 
hope that Lewis had not been an accessory before the fact. 
But that he was an accessory after the fact, no human be- 
ing could doubt. He must have seen the proceedings of 
the Court Martial, the evidence, the confession. If he 
really abhorred assassination as honest men abhor it, would 
not Barbesieux have been driven with ignominy from the 
royal presence, and flung into the Bastile? Yet Barbe- 



JOHN BABT. 281 

sieux was still at the War Office ; and it was not pretend- 
ed that he had been punished even by a word or a frown. 
It was plain, then, that both Kings were partakers in the 
guilt of Grandval. And if it were asked how two princes 
who made a high profession of religion could have fallen 
into such wickedness, the answer was that they had learned 
their religion from the Jesuits. In reply to these re- 
proaches, the English Jacobites said very little ; and the 
French government said nothing at all.* 



JOHN BAET. 



The privateers of Dunkirk had long been celebrated ; and 
among them John Bart, humbly born, and scarcely able to 
sign his name, but eminently brave and active, had attained 
an undisputed pre-eminence. In the country of Anson 
and Hawke, of Howe and Kodney, of Duncan, Saint Vin- 
cent and Nelson, the name of the most daring and skilful 
corsair would have little chance of being remembered. But 
France, among whose many unquestioned titles to glory 
very few are derived from naval war, still ranks Bart 
among her great men. In the autumn of 1692, this en- 
terprising freebooter was the terror of all the English and 
Dutch merchants who traded with the Baltic. He took 
and destroyed vessels close to the eastern coast of our 
island. He even ventured to land in Northumberland, 
and burned many houses before the trainbands could be 

* I have taken the History of Grandval's plot chiefly from Grand- 
val's own confession. I have not mentioned Madame de Maintenon, 
because Grandval, in his confession, did not mention her. The accu- 
sation Drought against her rests solely on the authority of Dumont. 
See also a True account of the horrid Conspiracy against the Life of 
His most Sacred Majesty William III., 1692 ; Reflections upon the 
late horrid Conspiracy contrived by some of the French Court to mur- 
der His Majesty in Flanders, 1692 ; Burnet, ii. 92 ; Vernon's letters 
from the camp to Colt, published by Tindal ; the London Gazette, 
Aug. 11. The Paris Gazette contains not one word on the subject, — 
a most significant silence. 



282 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

collected to oppose him. The prizes which he carried 
back into his native port were estimated at about a hun- 
dred thousand pounds sterling.* About the same time a 
younger adventurer, destined to equal or surpass Bart, Du 
Guay Trouin, was entrusted with the command of a small 
armed vessel. The intrepid boy, — for he was not yet 
twenty years old, — entered the estuary of the Shannon, 
sacked a mansion in the county of Clare, and did not re- 
embark till a detachment from the garrison of Limerick 
marched against him.f 



JAMES WHITNEY. 

Among- those who suffered was James Whitney, the most 
celebrated captain of banditti in the kingdom. He had 
been, during some months, the terror of all who travelled 
from London either northward or westward, and was at 
length with difficulty secured after a desperate conflict, in 
which one soldier was killed and several wounded. J The 
London Gazette announced that the famous highwayman 
had been taken, and invited all persons who had been 
robbed by him to repair to Newgate, and to see whether 
they could identify him. To identify him should have 
been easy : for he had a wound in the face, and had lost 
a thumb. § He, however, in the hope of pernlexing the 
witnesses for the Crown, expended a hundred pounds in 
procuring a sumptuous embroidered suit against the day 
of trial. This ingenious device was frustrated by his 
hard-hearted keepers. He was put to the bar in his ordi- 
nary clothes, convicted, and sentenced to death. || He had 

* See Bart's Letters of Nobility, and the Paris Gazettes of the au- 
tumn of 1692. 

\ Memoires de Du Guay Trouin. 

J Ibid. Dec. 1692; Hop, Jan. 3-13. Hop calls Whitney, "den 
befaamsten roover in Engelant." 

§ London Gazette, January 2, 1692-3. 

|| Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Jan. 1692-3. 



ANNE BRACEGIEDLE AND LOED MOHUN. 283 

previously tried to ransom himself by offering to raise a 
fine troop of cavalry, all highwaymen, for service in Flan- 
ders : but his offer had been rejected."* He had one re- 
source still left. He declared that he was privy to a trea- 
sonable plot. Some Jacobite lords had promised him 
immense rewards if he would, at the head of his gang, fall 
upon the King at a stag hunt in Windsor Forest. There 
was nothing intrinsically improbable in Whitney's story. 
Indeed, a design very similar to that which he imputed to 
the malcontents was, only three years later, actually 
formed by some of them, and was all but carried into exe- 
cution. But it was far better that a few bad men should 
go unpunished, than that all honest men should live in fear 
of being falsely accused by felons sentenced to the gal- 
lows. Chief Justice Holt advised the King to let the law 
take its course. William, never much inclined to give 
credit to stories about conspiracies, assented. The Cap- 
tain, as he was called, was hanged in Smithfield, and 
made a most penitent end.j 



ANNE BBACEGIRDLE AND LOKD MOHUN. 

The most popular actress of the time was Anne Brace- 
girdle. There were on the. stage many women of more 
faultless beauty, but none whose features and deportment 
had such power to fascinate the senses and the hearts of 
men. The sight of her bright black eyes and of her rich 
brown cheek, sufficed to put the most turbulent audience 
into good humour. It was said of her, that in the crowd- 
ed theatre she had as many lovers as she had male spec- 
tators. Yet no lover, however rich, however high in rank, 
had prevailed on her to be his mistress. Those who are 
acquainted with the parts which she was in the habit of 

* Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Dec. 1692. 

f Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, January and February ; Hop, Jan. 
31-F«b. 10, and Feb. 3-13, 1693 ; Letter to Secretary Trenchard, 
1694 ; New Court Contrivances or more Sham Plots still, 1693. 



284 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

playing, and with the epilogues which it was her especial 
business to recite, will not easily give her credit for any 
extraordinary measure of virtue or of delicacy. She 
seems to have been a cold, vain and interested coquette, 
who perfectly understood how much the influence of her 
charms was increased by the fame of a severity which cost 
her nothing, and who could venture to flirt with a succes- 
sion of admirers in the just confidence that no flame which 
she might kindle in them would thaw her own ice.* 
Among those who pursued her with an insane desire, was 
a profligate captain in the army named Hill. With Hill 
was closely bound in a league of debauchery and violence 
Charles Lord Mohun, a young nobleman whose life was 
one long revel and brawl. Hill, finding that the beautiful 
brunette was invincible, took it into his head that he was 
rejected for a more favoured rival, and that this rival was 
the brilliant Mountford. The jealous lover swore over his 
wine at a tavern, that he would stab the villain. " And 
I," said Mohun, " will stand by my friend.'* From the 
tavern the pair went, with some soldiers whose services 
Hill had secured, to Drury Lane, where the lady resided. 
They lay some time in wait for her. As soon as she ap- 
peared in the street, she was seized and hurried to a coach. 
She screamed for help : her mother clung round her : the 
whole neighbourhood rose; and she was rescued. Hill 
and Mohun went away vowing vengeance. They swag- 
gered sword in hand during two hours about the streets 
near Mountford' s dwelling. The watch requested them to 
put up their weapons. But when the young lord an- 
nounced that he was a peer, and bade the constables touch 
him if they durst, they let him pass. So strong was privi- 
lege then ; and so weak was law. Messengers were sent 
to warn Mountford of his danger : but unhappily they 
missed him. He came. A short altercation took place 
between him and Mohun ; and, while they were wrang- 
ling, Hill ran the unfortunate actor through the body, and 
fled. 

The grand jury of Middlesex, consisting of gentlemen 

* See Cibber's Apology, Tom Brown's Works, and indeed the 
works of every man of wit and pleasure about town. 



ANNE BRACEGIEDLE AND LOED MOHTJN. 285 

of note, found a bill of murder against Hill and Mohun. 
Hill escaped. Mohun was taken. His mother threw her- 
self at William's feet, but in vain. " It was a cruel act," 
said the King : "I shall leave it to the law." The trial 
came on in the Court of the Lord High Steward ; and, as 
Parliament happened to be sitting, the culprit had the ad- 
vantage of being judged by the whole body of the peer- 
age. There was then no lawyer in the Upper House. It 
therefore became necessary, for the first time since Buck- 
hurst had pronounced sentence on Essex and Southamp- 
ton, that a peer who had never made jurisprudence his 
special study, should preside over that grave tribunal. 
Caermarthen, who, as Lord President, took precedence of 
all the nobility, was appointed Lord High Steward. A 
full report of the proceedings has come down to us. No 
person, who carefully examines that report, and attends to 
the opinion unanimously given by the Judges in answer to 
a question which Nottingham drew up, and in which the 
facts brought out by the evidence are stated with perfect 
fairness, can doubt that the crime of murder was fully 
brought home to the prisoner. Such was the opinion of 
the King, who was present during the trial ; and such was 
the almost unanimous opinion of the public. Had the 
issue been tried by Holt and twelve plain men at the Old 
Bailey, there can be no doubt that a verdict of Guilty 
would have been returned. The Peers, however, by sixty- 
nine votes to fourteen, acquitted their accused brother. 
One great nobleman was so brutal and stupid as to say, 
" After all, the fellow was but a player ; and players are 
rogues." All the newsletters, all the coffee-house orators, 
complained that the blood of the poor was shed with im- 
punity by the great. Wits remarked that the only fair 
thing about the trial was the show of ladies in the gal- 
leries. Letters and journals are still extant in which men 
of all shades of opinion, Whigs, Tories, Nonjurors, con- 
demn the partiality of the tribunal. It was not to be ex- 
pected that, while the memory of this scandal was fresh 
in the public mind, the Commons would be induced to give 
any new advantage to accused peers.* 

* The chief source of information about this case is the report of the 
trial, which will be found in Howell's Collection. See Evelyn's Diary, 



286 maacuat's miscellaneous writings. 



CHAELES BLOUNT. 

There was then about town a man of good family, oi 
some reading, and of some small literary talent, named 
Charles Blount.* In politics he belonged to the extreme 
section of the Whig party. In the days of the Exclusion 
Bill he had been one of Shaftesbury's brisk boys, and 
had, under the signature of Junius Brutus, magnified the 
virtues and public services of Titus Oates, and exhorted 
the Protestants to take signal vengeance on the Papists 
for the fire of London and for the murder* of Godfrey.f 
As to the theological questions which were in issue be- 
tween Protestants and Papists, Blount was perfectly im- 
partial. He was an infidel, and the head of a small school 
of infidels, who were troubled with a morbid desire to 
make converts. He translated from the Latin translation 
part of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and appended to 
it notes of which the flippant profaneness called forth the 
severe censure of an unbeliever of a very different order, 
the illustrious Bayle.J Blount also attacked Christianity 
in several original treatises, or rather in several treatises 
purporting to be original ; for he was the most audacious 
of literary thieves, and transcribed, without acknowledg- 
ment, whole pages from authors who had preceded him. 
His delight was to worry the priests by asking them how 
light existed before the sun was made, how Paradise could 



February 4, 1692-3. I have taken some circumstances from Narcis- 
cus Luttrell's Diary, from a letter to Sancroft which is among the 
Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library, and from two letters addressed 
by Brewer to Wharton, which are also in the Bodleian Library. 

* Dryden, in his Life of Lucian, speaks in too high terms of Blount's 
abilities. But Dryden's judgment was biased ; for Blount's first work 
was a pamphlet in defence of the Conquest of Granada. 

f See his Appeal from the Country to the City for the Preservation 
of His Majesty's Person, Liberty, Property, and the Protestant Reli- 
gion. 

J See the article on Apollonius in Bayle's Dictionary. I say that 
Blount made his translation from the Latin ; for his works contain 
abundant proofs that he was not competent to translate from the 
Greek. 



CHARLES BLOUNT. 287 

be bounded by Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates, 
bow serpents moved before they were condemned to crawl, 
and where Eve found thread to stitch her fig-leaves. To 
his speculations on these subjects he gave the lofty name 
of the Oracles of Eeason ; and indeed, whatever he said 
or wrote was considered as oracular by his disciples. Of 
those disciples the most noted was a bad writer named 
Gildon, who lived to pester another generation with dog- 
gerel and slander, and whose memory is still preserved, 
not by his own voluminous works, but by two or three lines 
in which his stupidity and venality have been contemptu- 
ously mentioned by Pope.* 

Little as either the intellectual or the moral character 
of Blount may seem to deserve respect, it is in a great 
measure to him that we must attribute the emancipation 
of the English press. Between him and the licensers 
there was a feud of long standing. Before the Revolu- 
tion, one of his heterodox treatises had been grievously 
mutilated by Lestrange, and at last suppressed by 
orders from Lestrange's superior, the Bishop of Lon- 
don.! Bohun was a scarcely less severe critic than Les- 
trange. Blount therefore began to make war on the 
censorship and the censor. The hostilities were com- 
menced by a tract which came forth without any license, 
and which is entitled, A Just Vindication of Learning 
and of the Liberty of the Press, by Philopatris.J "Who- 
ever reads this piece, and is not aware that Blount was 
one of the most unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived, 
will be surprised to find, mingled with the £>oor thoughts 
and poor words of a third-rate pamphleteer, passages so 
elevated in sentiment and style, that they would be wor- 
thy of the greatest name in letters. The truth is that 
the Just Vindication consists chiefly of garbled extracts 
from the Areopagitica of Milton. That noble discourse 
had been neglected by the generation to which it was ad- 
dressed, had sunk into oblivion, and was at the mercy of 

* See Gildon's edition of Blount's Works, 1695. 

•j- Wood's Athense Oxonienses, under the name Henry Blount 
(Charles Blount's father) : Lestrange's Obserrator, No. 290. 

\ This piece was reprinted by Gildon in 1695 among Blount's 
Works. 



288 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

every pilferer. The literary workmanship of Blount re- 
sembled the architectural workmanship of those barbarians 
who used the Coliseum and the Theatre of Pompey as 
quarries, who built hovels out of Ionian friezes, and 
propped cow-houses on pillars of lazulite. Blount con- 
cluded, as Milton had done, by recommending that any 
book might be printed without a license, provided that the 
name of the author or publisher were registered.* The 
Just Vindication was well received. The blow was 
speedily followed up. There still remained in the Areo- 
pagitica many fine passages which Blount had not used in 
his first pamphlet. Out of these passages he constructed 
a second pamphlet, entitled, Seasons for the Liberty of 
Unlicensed Printing.! To these reasons he appended a 
postscript, entitled, A Just and True Character of Ed- 
mund Bohun. This Character was written with extreme 
bitterness. Passages were quoted from the licenser's writ- 
ings, to prove that he held the doctrines of passive obedi- 
ence and non-resistance. He was accused of using his 
power systematically for the purpose of favouring the ene- 
mies and silencing the friends of the Sovereigns whose 
bread he ate ; and it was asserted that he was the friend 
and the pupil of his predecessor Sir Koger. 

Blount's Character of Bohun could not be publicly 
sold ; but it was widely circulated. While it was passing 
from hand to hand, and while the Whigs were every where 
exclaiming against the new censor as a second Lestrange, 
he was requested to authorize the publication of an anony- 
mous work entitled, King William and Queen Mary Con- 

* That the plagiarism of Blount should have been detected by few 
of his contemporaries is not wonderful. But it is wonderful that in 
the Biographia Britannica his Just Vindication should be warmly ex- 
tolled, without the slightest hint that every thing good in it is stolen. 
The Areopagitica is not the only work which he pillaged on this occa- 
sion. He took a noble passage from Bacon without acknowledgment. 

t I unhesitatingly attribute this pamphlet to Blount, though it was 
not reprinted among his works by Gildon. If Blount did not actually 
write it he must certainly have superintended the writing. That two 
men of letters, acting without concert, should bring out within » very 
short time two treatises, one made out of one half of the Areopagitica, 
and the other made out of the other half, is incredible. Why Gildon 
did not choose to reprint the second pamphlet will appear hereafter. 



CHAPvLES BL0U3TT. 289 

querors.* He readily and indeed eagerly complied. For 
in truth there was between the doctrines which he had 
long professed and the doctrines which were propounded 
in this treatise, a coincidence so exact, that many suspect- 
ed him of being the author ; nor was this suspicion weak- 
ened by a passage in which a compliment was paid to his 
political writings. But the real author was that very 
Blount who was, at that very time, labouring to inflame 
the public both against the Licensing Act and the licenser. 
Blount's motives may easily be divined. His own opin- 
ions were diametrically opposed to those which, on this 
occasion, he put forward in the most offensive manner. It 
is therefore impossible to doubt that his object was to en- 
snare and to ruin Bohun. It was a base and wicked 
scheme. But it cannot be denied that the trap was laid 
and baited with much skill. The republican succeeded 
in personating a high Tory. The atheist succeeded in 
personating a high Churchman. The pamphlet concluded 
with a devout prayer that the God of light and love would 
open the understanding and govern the will of English- 
men, so that they might see the things which belonged to 
their peace. The censor was in raptures. In every page 
he found his own thoughts expressed more plainly than he 
had ever expressed them. Never before, in his opinion, 
haol the true claim of their Majesties to obedience been so 
clearly stated. Every Jacobite who read this admirable 
tract must inevitably be converted. The nonjurors would 
flock to take the oaths. The nation, so long divided, 
would at length be united. From these pleasing dreams 
Bohun was awakened by learning, a few hours after the 
appearance of the discourse which had charmed him, that 
the title-page had set all London in a flame, and that the 
odious words, King William and Queen Mary Conquerors, 
had moved the indignation of multitudes who had never 
read further. Only four clays after the publication, he 
heard that the House of Commons had taken the matter 
up, that the book had been called by some members a ras- 
cally book, and that, as the author was unknown, the Ser- 
jeant-at-Arms was in search of the licenser. f Bohun' s 

* Bohun's Autobiography. 

f Bohun's Autobiography ; Commons' Journals, Jam 20, 1692-3. 



290 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

mind had never been strong ; and he was entirely un« 
nerved and bewildered by the fury and suddenness of the 
storm which had burst upon him. He went to the House. 
Most of the members whom he met in the passages and 
lobbies frowned on him. When he was put to the bar, 
and, after three profound obeisances, ventured to lift his 
head and look round him, he could read his doom in the 
angry and contemptuous looks which were cast on him 
from every side. He hesitated, blundered, contradicted 
himself, called the Speaker My Lord, and, by his confused 
way of speaking, raised a tempest of rude laughter which 
confused him still more. As soon as he had withdrawn, 
it was unanimously resolved, that the obnoxious treatise 
should be burned in Palace Yard by the common hang- 
man. It was also resolved, without a division, that the 
King should be requested to remove Bohun from the office 
of 'licenser. The poor man, ready to faint with grief and 
fear, was conducted by the officers of the House to a place 
of confinement.* 

But scarcely was he in his prison, when a large body 
of members clamorously demanded a more important vic- 
tim. Burnet had, shortly after he became Bishop of Salis- 
bury, addressed to the clergy of his diocese a Pastoral 
Letter, exhorting them to take the oaths. In one para- 
graph of this letter he had held language bearing some 
resemblance to that of the pamphlet which had just been 
sentenced to the flames. There were . indeed distinctions 
which a judicious and impartial tribunal would not have 
failed to notice. But the tribunal before which Burnet 
was arraigned was neither judicious nor impartial. His 
faults had made him many enemies, and his virtues many 
more. The discontented Whigs complained that he leaned 
towards the Court, the High Churchmen that he leaned 
towards the Dissenters ; nor can it be supposed that a man 
of so much boldness and so little tact, a man so indis- 
creetly frank and so restlessly active, had passed through 
life without crossing the schemes and wounding the feel- 
ings of some whose opinions agreed with his. He was re- 
garded with peculiar malevolence by Howe. Howe had 



t> 



Bohun's Autobiography ; Commons' Journals, Jan. 20, 21, 1692-3. 



CHAELES BLOUNT. 291 

never, even while lie was in office, been in the habit of re- 
straining his bitter and petulant tongue ; and he had 
recently been turned out of office in a way which had 
made him ungovernably ferocious. The history of his 
dismission is not accurately known, but it was certainly 
accompanied by some circumstances which had cruelly 
galled his temper. If rumour could be trusted, he had 
fancied that Mary was in love with him, and had availed 
himself of an opportunity which offered itself while he 
was in attendance on her as Vice Cnamberlain, to make 
some advances, which had justly moved her indignation. 
Soon after he was discarded, he was prosecuted for hav- 
ing, in a fit of passion, beaten one of his servants savagely 
within the verge of the palace. He had pleaded guilty, 
and had been pardoned : but from this time he showed, on 
every occasion, the most rancorous personal hatred of his 
royal mistress, of her husband, and of all who were fa- 
voured by either. It was known that the Queen frequently 
consulted Burnet ; and Howe was possessed with the belief 
that her severity was to be imputed to Burnet's influence* 
Now was the time to be revenged. In a long and elabo- 
rate speech, the spiteful Whig — for such he still affected 
to be — represented Burnet as a Tory of the worst class. 
"There should be a law," he said, "making' it penal for 
the clergy to introduce politics into their discourses. For- 
merly they sought to enslave us by crying up the divine 
and indefeasible right of the hereditary prince. Now 
they try to arrive at the same result, by telling us that we 
are a conquered people." It was moved that the Bishop 
should be impeached. To this motion there was an unan- 
swerable objection, which the Speaker pointed out. The 
Pastoral Letter had been written in 1689, and was there- 
fore covered by the Act of Grace which had been passed 
in 1690. Yet a member was not ashamed to say, "No 
matter : impeach him ; and force him to plead the Act." 
Few, however, were disposed to take a course so unworthy 
of a House of Commons. Some wag cried out, " Burn it ; 
burn it ; " and this bad pun ran along the benches, and 

* Oldmixon ; Narcissus LuttrelTs Diary, Nov. and Dec. 1692 ; 
Burnet, ii. 334 ; Bohun's Autobiography. 



292 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

was received with shouts of laughter. It was moved that 
the Pastoral Letter should be burned by the common hang- 
man. A long and vehement debate followed. For Bur- 
net was a man warmty loved as well as warmly hated. 
The great majority of the Whigs stood firmly by him ; 
and his good nature and generosity had made him friends 
even among the Tories. The contest lasted two days. 
Montague and Finch, men of widely different opinions, 
appear to have been foremost among the Fishop's cham- 
pions. An attempt to get rid of the subject by moving 
the previous question failed. At length the main question 
was put ; and the Pastoral Letter w T as condemned to the 
flames by a small majority in a full house. The Ayes 
were a hundred and sixty-two ; the Noes a hundred and 
fifty-five.* The general opinion, at least of the capital, 
seems to have been that Burnet was cruelly treated.f 

He was not naturally a man of fine feelings ; and the 
life which he had led had not tended to make them finer. 
He had been during many years a mark for theological 
and political animosity. Grave doctors had anathematized 
him : ribald poets had lampooned him : princes and min- 
isters had laid snares for his life ; he had been long a wan- 
derer and an exile, in constant peril of being kidnapped, 
struck in the boots, hanged and quartered. Yet none of 
these things had ever seemed to move him. His self-con- 
ceit had been proof against ridicule, and his dauntless 
temper against danger. But on this occasion his fortitude 
seems to have failed him. To be stigmatized by the pop- 
ular branch of the legislature as a teacher of doctrines so 
servile that they disgusted even Tories, to be joined in one 
sentence of condemnation with the editor of Filmer, was 
too much. How deeply Burnet was wounded, appeared 
many years later, when, after his death, his History of his 
Life and Times was given to the world. In that work he 
is ordinarily garrulous even to minuteness about all that 
concerns himself, and sometimes relates with amusing in- 
genuousness his own mistakes and the censures which 

* Grey's Debates; Commons' Journals, Jan. 21, 23, 1692-8; 
Bohim's Autobiography ; Kennet's Life and Reign of King William 
and Queen Mary. 

f " Most men pitying the Bishop." — Bohun's Autobiography. 



CHAKLES BLOUNT. 293 

those mistakes brought upon him. But about the igno- 
minious judgment passed by the House of Commons on 
his Pastoral Letter, he has preserved a most significant 
silence.* 

The plot which ruined Bohun, though it did no honour 
to those who contrived it, produced important and salutary 
effects. Before the conduct of the unlucky licenser had 
been brought under the consideration of Parliament, the 
Commons had resolved, without any division, and, as far 
as appears, without any discussion, that the Act which 
subjected literature to a censorship should be continued. 
But the question had now assumed a new aspect ; and the 
continuation of the Act was no longer regarded as a mat- 
ter of course. A feeling in favour of the liberty of the 
press, a feeling not yet, it is true, of wide extent or formi- 
dable intensity, began to show itself. The existing, sys- 
tem, it was said, was prejudicial both to commerce and to 
learning. Could it be expected that any capitalist would 
advance the funds necessary for a great literary undertak- 
ing, or that any scholar would expend years of toil and 
research on such an undertaking, while it was possible 
that, at the last moment, the caprice, the malice, the folly 
of one man might frustrate the whole design % And was 
it certain that the law which so grievously restricted both 
the freedom of trade and the freedom of thought, had 
really added to the security of the State *? Had not re- 
cent experience proved that the licenser might himself be 
an enemy of their Majesties, or, worse still, an absurd and 
perverse friend ; that he might suppress a book of which 
it would be for their interest that every house in the coun- 
try should have a copy, and that he might readily give his 



* The vote of the Commons is mentioned, with much feeling in the 
memoirs which Burnet wrote at the time. " It looked," he says, 
" somewhat extraordinary that I, who perhaps was the greatest asser- 
tor of publick liberty, from my first setting out, of any writer of the 
age, should be soe severely treated as an enemy to it. But the truth 
was the To ryes never liked me, and the Whiggs hated me because I 
went not into their notions and passions. But even this, and worse 
things that may happen to me shall not, I hope, be able to make me 
depart from moderate principles and the just asserting the liberty of 
mankind."— Burnet MS. Hart 6584. 



294 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

their people, and which deserved to be torn and burned by 
the hand of Ketch 1 Had the government gained much 
by establishing a literary police which prevented English- 
men from having the History of the Bloody Circuit, and 
allowed them, by way of compensation, to read tracts 
which represented King William and Queen Mary as con- 
querors I 

In that age, persons who were not specially interested 
in a public bill very seldom petitioned Parliament against 
it or for it. The only petitions, therefore, wL'ch were at 
this conjuncture presented to the two Houses against the 
censorship, came from, booksellers, bookbinders, and print- 
ers.* But the opinion which these classes expressed was 
certainly not confined to them. 

The law which was about to expire had lasted eight 
years. It was renewed for only two years. It appears, 
from an entry in the Journals of the Commons, which un- 
fortunately is defective, that a division took place on an 
amendment about the nature of which we are left entirely 
in the dark. The votes were ninety-nine to eighty. In 
the Lords it was proposed, according to the suggestion 
offered fifty years before by Milton, and stolen from him 
by Blount, to exempt from the authority of the licenser 
every book which bore the name of an author or publish- 
er. This amendment was rejected ; and the bill passed, 
but not without a protest signed by eleven peers, who de- 
clared that they could not think it for the public interest 
to subject all learning and true information to the arbitrary 
will and pleasure of a mercenary and perhaps ignorant 
licenser. Among those who protested were Halifax, 
Shrewsbury, and Mulgrave, three noblemen belonging to 
different political parties, but all distinguished by their lit- 
erary attainments. It is to be lamented that the signa- 
tures of Tillotson and Burnet, who were both present on 
that day, should be wanting. Dorset was absent, f 

Blount, by whose exertions and machinations the oppo- 
sition to the censorship had been raised, did not live to see 
that opposition successful. Though not a very young man, 

* Commons' Journals, Feb. 27, 1692-3 ; Lords' Journals, Mar. 4. 
• t Lords' Journals, March 8, 1692-3. 



DEAK SWIFT. 295 

he was possessed by an insane passion for the sister of his 
deceased wife. Having long laboured in vain to convince 
the object of his love that she might lawfully marry him, 
he at last, whether from weariness of life, or in the hope 
of touching her heart, inflicted on himself a wound of 
which, after languishing long, he died. He has often been 
mentioned as a blasphemer and self-murderer. But the 
important service which, by means doubtless most immoral 
and dishonourable, he rendered to his country, has passed 
almost unnoticed.* 



DEAN SWIFT. 



The prorogation drew nigh ; and still the fate of the Tri- 
ennial Bill was uncertain. Some of the ablest ministers 
thought the bill a good one ; and, even had they thought 
it a bad one, they would probably have tried to dissuade 
their master from rejecting it. It was impossible, how- 
ever, to remove from his mind the impression that a con- 
cession on this point would seriously impair his authority. 
Not relying on the judgment of his ordinary advisers, he 
sent Portland to ask the opinion of Sir William Temple. 
Temple had made a retreat for Hmself at a place called 

* In the article on Blount in the Biographia Britannica he is ex- 
tolled as having borne a principal share in the emancipation of the 
press. But the writer was very imperfectly informed as to the facts. 

It is strange that the circumstances of Blount's death should be so 
uncertain. That he died of a wound inflicted by his own hand, and 
that he languished long, are undisputed facts. The common story 
was that he shot himself; and Narcissus Luttrell, at the time, made 
an entry to this effect in his diary. On the other hand, Pope, who had 
the very best opportunities of obtaining accurate information, asserts 
that Blount, " being in love with a near kinswoman of his, and reject- 
ed, gave himself a stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of 
the consequence of which he really died." — Note on the Epilogue to 
the Satires, Dialogue I. Warburton, who had lived first with the he- 
roes of the Dunciad, and then with the most eminent men of letters of 
his time, ought to have known the truth ; and Warburton, by his si- 
lence, confirms Pope's assertion. Gildon's rhapsody about the death 
of his friend will suit either story equally. 



298 maoaulat's miscellaneous writings. 

Moor Park, in the neighbourhood of Farnham. The coun- 
try round his dwelling was almost a wilderness. His 
amusement during some years had been to create in the 
waste what those Dutch burgomasters, among whom he 
had passed some of the best years of his life, would have 
considered as a paradise. His hermitage had been occa- 
sionally honoured by the presence of the King, who had 
from a boy known and esteemed the author of the Triple 
Alliance, and who was well pleased to find, among the 
heath and furze of the wilds of Surrey, a spot which 
seemed to be part of Holland, a straight canal, a terrace, 
rows of clipped trees, and rectangular beds of flowers and 
pot-herbs. 

Portland now repaired to this secluded abode and con- 
sulted the oracle. Temple was decidedly of opinion that 
the bill ought to pass. Pie was apprehensive that the rea- 
sons which led him to form this opinion might not be fully 
and correctly reported to the King by Portland, who was 
indeed as brave a soldier and as trusty a friend as ever 
lived, whose natural abilities were not inconsiderable, and 
who, in some departments of business, had great experi- 
ence, but who was very imperfectly acquainted with the 
history and constitution of England. As the state of Sir 
"William's health made it impossible for him to go himself 
to Kensington, he determined to send his secretary thith- 
er. The secretary was a poor scholar of four or five and 
twenty, under whose plain garb and ungainly deportment 
were concealed some of the choicest gifts that have ever 
been bestowed on any of the children of men ; rare pow- 
ers of observation, brilliant wit, grotesque invention, hu- 
mour of the most austere flavour, yet exquisitely delicious, 
eloquence singularly pure, manly and perspicuous. This 
young man was named Jonathan Swift. He was born in 
Ireland, but would have thought himself insulted if he 
had been called an Irishman. He was of unmixed Eng- 
lish blood, and, through life, regarded the aboriginal popu- 
lation of the island in which he first drew breath as an 
alien and a servile caste. He had in the late reign kept 
terms at the University of Dublin, but had been distin- 
guished there only by his irregularities, and had with diffi- 
culty obtained his degree. At the time of the Eevolution, 



DEAN SWIFT. 297 

he had, with many thousands of his fellow colonists, taken 
refuge in the mother country from the violence of Tyrcon- 
nel, and had thought himself fortunate in being able to 
obtain shelter at Moor Park.* For that shelter, however, 
he had to pay a heavy price. He was thought to be suffi- 
ciently remunerated for his services with twenty pounds a 
year and his board. He dined at the second table. Some- 
times, indeed, when better company was not to be had, he 
was honoured by being invited to play at cards with his 
patron ; and on such occasions Sir William was so gene- 
rous as to give his antagonist a little silver to begin with.f 
The humble student would not have dared to raise his 
eyes to a lady of family : but, when he had become a cler- 
gyman, he began, after the fashion of the clergymen of 
that generation, to make love to a pretty waiting-maid 
who was the chief ornament of the servants' hall, and 
whose name is inseparably associated with his in a sad 
and mysterious history. 

Swift many years later confessed some part of what he 
felt when he found himself on his way to Court. His 
spirit had been bowed down, and might seem to have been 
broken, by calamities and humiliations. The language 
which he was in the habit of holding to his patron, as far 
as we can judge from the specimens which still remain, 
was that of a lacquey, or rather of a beggar.J A sharp 
word or a cold look of the master sufficed to make the 
servant miserable during several days.§ But this tame- 
ness was merely the tameness with which a tiger, caught, 
caged and starved, submits to the keeper who brings Mm 
food. The humble menial was at heart the haughtiest, 
the most aspiring, the most vindictive, the most despotic 
of men. And now at length a great, a boundless prospect 
was opening before him. To William he was already 
slightly known. At Moor Park the King had sometimes, 
when his host was confined by gout to an easy chair, been 
attended by the secretary about the grounds. His Majesty 

* As to Swift's extraction and early life, see the Anecdotes writ- 
ten by himself. 

t Journal to Stella, Letter liii. 

t See Swift's Letter to Temple of Oct. 6, 1694. 

§ Journal to Stella, Letter xix. 

13* 



298 MACAULAT'S anSCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

had condescended to teach his companion the Dutch way 
of cutting and eating asparagus, and had graciously asked 
whether Mr. Swift would like to have a captain's commis- 
sion in a cavalry regiment. But now for the first time 
the young man was to stand in the royal presence as a 
counsellor. He was admitted into the closet, delivered a 
letter from Temple, and explained and enforced the argu- 
ments which that letter contained, concisely, but doubtless 
with clearness and ability. There was, he said, no reason 
to think that short Parliaments would be more disposed 
than long Parliaments to encroach on the just prerogatives 
of the Crown. In fact, the Parliament which had, in the 
preceding generation, waged war against a King, led him 
captive, sent him to the prison, to the bar, to the scaffold, 
was known in our annals as emphatically the long Parlia- 
ment. Never would such disasters have befallen the mon- 
archy, but for the fatal law which secured that assembly 
from dissolution.* There was, it must be owned, a flaw 
in this reasoning, which a man less shrewd than William 
might easily detect. That one restriction of the royal 
prerogative had been mischievous, did not prove that an- 
other restriction would be salutary. It by no means fol- 
lowed, because one sovereign had been ruined by being 
unable to get rid of a hostile Parliament, that another sov- 
ereign might not be ruined by being forced to part with a 
friendly Parliament. To the great mortification of the 
ambassador, his arguments failed to shake the King's reso- 
lution. On the fourteenth of March, the Commons were 
summoned to the Uppper House : the title of the Trien- 
nial Bill was read : and it was announced, after the ancient 
form, that the King and Queen would take the matter into 
their consideration. The Parliament was then prorogued. 



THE LOKD KEEPER SOMERS. 

Another Whig of far higher character was called at the 
same time to a far higher place in the administration. 

* Swift's Anecdotes. 



THE LORD KEEPER SOMERS. 299 

The Great Seal had now been four years in commission. 
Since Maynard's retirement, the constitution of the Court 
of Chancery had commanded little respect. Trevor, who 
was the First Commissioner, wanted neither parts nor 
learning : but his integrity was with good reason suspect- 
ed ; and the duties which, as Speaker of the House of 
Commons, he had to perform during four or five months in 
the busiest part of every year, made it impossible for him 
to be an efficient judge in equity. Every suitor complained 
that he had to wait a most unreasonable time for a judg- 
ment, and that, when at length a judgment 1 ad been pro- 
nounced, it was very likely to be reversed en appeal. 
Meanwhile, there was no efficient minister of justice, no 
great functionary to whom it especially belonged to advise 
the King touching the appointment of Judges, of Counsel 
for the Crown, of Justices of the Peace.* It was known 
that William was sensible of the inconvenience of this 
state of things ; and, during several months, there had 
been flying rumours that a Lord Keeper or a Lord Chan- 
cellor would soon be appointed.f The name most fre- 
quently mentioned was that of Nottingham. But the 
same reasons which had prevented him from accepting the 
Great Seal in 1689, had, since that year, rather gained 
than lost strength. William at length fixed his choice on 
Somers. 

Somers was only in his forty-second year; and five 
years had not elapsed since, on the great day of the trial 
of the Bishops, his powers had first been made known to 
the world. From that time his fame had been steadily 
and rapidly rising. Neither in forensic nor in parliamen- 
tary eloquence had he any superior. The consistency of 
his public conduct had gained for him the entire confidence 
of the Whigs ; and the urbanity of his manners had con- 
ciliated the Tories. It was not without great reluctance 
that he consented to quit ah assembly over which he exer- 
cised an immense influence, for an assembly where it would 
be necessary for him to sit in silence. He had been but 
a short time in great practice. His savings were small. 

* Burnet, ii. 107. 

f These rumours are more than once mentioned in Narcissus Lut- 
trell's Diary. 



300 macatjlay's miscellaneous tvkitixgs. 

Not having the means of supporting a hereditary title, he 
must, if he accepted the high dignity which was offered to 
him, preside during some years in the Upper House with- 
out taking part in the debates. The opinion of others, 
however, was that he would be more useful as head of the 
law than as head of the Whig party in the Commons. 
He was sent for to Kensington, and called into the Coun- 
cil Chamber. Caermarthen spoke in the name of the 
King. " Sir John," he said, "it is necessary for the pub- 
lic service that you should take this charge upon you ; and 
I have it in command from His Majesty tc say that he can 
admit of no excuse." Somers submitted. The seal was 
delivered to him, with a patent which entitled him to a 
pension of two thousand a year from the day on which he 
should quit his office ; and he was immediately sworn in 
a Privy Councillor and Lord Keeper.* 



CHARLES EARL OF MEDDLETON. 

However desirous the Most Christian King might be to 
uphold the cause of hereditary monarchy and of pure reli- 
gion all over the world, his first duty was to his own king- 
dom ; and, unless a counter-revolution speedily took place 
in England, his duty to his own kingdom might impose 
on him the painful necessity of treating with the Prince 
of Orange. It would therefore be wise in James to do 
without delay whatever he could honourably and conscien- 
tiously do to win back the hearts of his people. 

Thus pressed, James unwillingly yielded. He con- 
sented to give a share in the management of his affairs to 
one of the most distinguished of the Compounders, Charles 
Earl of Middleton. 

Middleton's family and his peerage were Scotch. But 
he was closely connected with some of the noblest houses 
of England: he had resided long in England: he had 
been appointed by Charles the Second one of the English 

* London Gazette, March 27, 1693 ; Narcissus LuttrelTs Diary. 



CHARLES EABL OF MIDDLETOX. 301 

Secretaries of State, and had been entrusted by James 
with the lead of the English House of Commons. His 
abilities and acquirements were considerable : his temper 
was easy and generous : his manners were popular ; and 
his conduct had generally been consistent and honourable. 
He had, when Popery was in the ascendant, resolutely re- 
fused to purchase the royal favour by apostasy. Eoman 
Catholic ecclesiastics had been sent to convert him ; and 
the town had been much amused by the dexterity with 
which the layman baffled the divines. A priest undertook 
to demonstrate the doctrine of transubstantiation, and 
made the approaches in the usual form. " Your Lordship 
believes in the Trinity." " Who told you so ? " said Mid- 
dleton. " Not believe in the Trinity ! " cried the priest in 
amazement. " Nay," said Middleton ; " prove your reli- 
gion to be true, if you can : but do not catechise me about 
mine." As it was plain that the Secretary was not a dis- 
putant whom it was easy to take at an advantage, the con- 
troversy ended almost as soon as it began.* When for- 
tune changed, Middleton adhered to the cause of heredi- 
tary monarchy with a steadfastness which was the more 
respectable because he would have had no difficulty in 
making his peace with the new government. His senti- 
ments were so well known that, when the kingdom was 
agitated by apprehensions of an invasion and an insurrec- 
tion, he was arrested and sent to the Tower : but no evi- 
dence on which he could be convicted of treason was dis- 
covered ; and, when the dangerous crisis was past, he was 
set at liberty. It should seem, indeed, that, during the 
three years which followed the Eevolution, he was by no 
means an active plotter. He saw that a Eestoration could 
be effected only with the general assent of the nation, and 
that the nation would never assent to a Eestoration with- 
out securities against Popery and arbitrary power. He 
therefore conceived that, while his banished master obsti- 
nately refused to give such securities, it would be worse 
than idle to conspire against the existing government. 

Such was the man whom James, in consequence of 
strong representations from Versailles, new invited to join 

* Burnet, i. 683. 



302 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

him in France. The great body of Compounders learned 
with delight that they were at length to be represented in 
the Council at Saint Germains by one of their favourite 
leaders. Some noblemen and gentlemen who, though they 
had not approved of the deposition of James, had been so 
much disgusted by his perverse and absurd conduct, that 
they had long avoided all connection with him, now began 
to hope that he had seen his error. They had refused to 
have any thing to do with Melfort ; but they communica- 
ted freely with Middleton. The new minister conferred 
also with the four traitors whose infamy has been made 
pre-eminently conspicuous by their station, their abilities, 
and their great public services ; with Godolphin, the great 
object of whose life was to be in favour with both the rival 
Kings at once, and to keep through all revolutions and 
counter-revolutions, his head, his estate, and a place at the 
Board of Treasury; with Shrewsbury, who, having once 
in a fatal moment entangled himself in criminal and dis- 
honourable engagemeants, had not had the resolution to 
break through them ; with Marlborough, who continued to 
profess the deepest repentance for the past, and the best 
intentions for the future ; and with Kussell, who declared 
that he was still what he had been before the day of La 
Hogue, and renewed his promise to do what Monk had 
done, on condition that a general pardon should be grant- 
ed to all political offenders, and that the royal power 
should be placed under strong constitutional restraints. 

Before Middleton left England, he had collected the 
sense of all the leading Compounders. They were of 
opinion that there was one expedient which would recon- 
cile contending factions at home, and lead to the speedy 
pacification of Europe. This expedient was, that James 
should resign the Crown in favour of the Prince of Wales, 
and that the Prince of Wales should be bred a Protestant. 
If, as was but too probable, His Majesty should refuse to 
listen to this suggestion, he must at least consent to put 
forth a Declaration which might do away the unfavourable 
impression made by his Declaration of the preceding 
spring. A paper such as it was thought expedient that 
he should publish was carefully drawn up, and, after much 
discussion, approved. 



WILLIAM III. AT THE BATTLE OF LANDED. 303 

Early in the year 1693, Micldleton, having been put in 
full possession of the views of the principal English Jaco- 
bites, stole across the Channel, and made his appearance 
at the Court of James. There was at that Court no want 
of slanderers and sneerers, whose malignity was only the 
more dangerous because it wore a meek and sanctimonious 
air. Middleton found, on his arrival, that numerous lies, 
fabricated by the priests who feared and hated him, were 
already in circulation. Some Noncompounders too had 
written from London that he was at heart a Presbyterian 
and a republican. He was, however, very graciously re- 
ceived, and was appointed Secretary of State conjointly 
with Melfort * 



WILLIAM III. AT THE BATTLE OF LANDEK 

It was only on such occasions as this that the whole 
greatness of William's character appeared. Amidst the 
rout and uproar, while arms and standards were flung 
away, while multitudes of fugitives were choking up the 
bridges and fords of the Gette, or perishing in its waters, 
the King, having directed Talmash to superintend the re- 
treat, put himself at the head of a few brave regiments, 
and by desperate efforts arrested the progress of the ene- 
my. His risk was greater than that which others ran. 
For he could not be persuaded either to encumber his fee- 
ble frame with a cuirass, or to hide the ensigns of the gar- 
ter. He thought his star a good rallying point for his 
own troops, and only smiled when he was told that it was 
a good mark for the enemy. Many fell on his right hand 
and on his left. Two led horses, which in the field always 
closely followed his person, were struck dead by cannon 
shots. One musket ball jDassed through the curls of his 
wig, another through his coat : a third bruised his side, 

* As to this change of ministry at Saint Germains see the very 
curious but very confused narrative in the Life of James, ii. 498-515 ; 
Burnet ii. 219 ; Memoires de Saint Simon ; A French Conquest nei- 
ther desirable nor practicable, 1693 ; and the Letters from the Naime 
MSS., printed by Macpherson. 



304 macaulat's miscellaneous writings. 

and tore his blue riband to tatters. Many years latei 
grey-beaded old pensioners who crept about the arcades 
and alleys of Chelsea Hospital used to relate how he 
charged at the head of Gal way's horse, how he dismount- 
ed four times to put heart into the infantry, how he rallied 
one corps which seemed to be shrinking : " That is not 
the way to fight, gentlemen. You must stand close up to 
them. Thus, gentlemen, thus." " You might have seen 
him," an eye-witness wrote, only four days after the bat- 
tle, " with his sword in his hand, throwing himself upon the 
enemy. It is certain that, one time, among the rest, he 
was seen at the head of two English regiments, and that 
he fought seven with these two in sight of the whole army, 
driving them before him above a quarter of an hour. 
Thanks be to God that preserved him." The enemy 
pressed on him so close, that it was with difficulty that he 
at length made his way over the Gette. A small body of 
brave men, who shared his peril to the last, could hardly 
keep off the pursuers as he crossed the bridge.* 



WILLIAM ANDEBTON. 

The ill humour which the public calamities naturally pro- 
duced, was inflamed by every factious artifice. Never had 
the Jacobite pamphleteers been so savagely scurrilous as 

* Berwick; Saint Simon; Burnet i. 112, 113; Feuquieres; Lon- 
don Gazette, July 27, 31, Aug. 3, 1693; French Official Relation; 
Relation sent by the King of Great Britain to their High Mightinesses, 
Aug. 2, 1693 ; Extract of a Letter from the Adjutant of the King of 
England's Dragoon Guards, Aug. 1 ; Dykvelt's Letter to the States 
General, dated July 30, at noon. The last four papers will be found 
in the Monthly Mercuries of July and August, 1 693. See also the His- 
tory of the Last Campaign in the Spanish Netherlands by Edward 
D'Auvergne, dedicated to the Duke of Ormond, 1693. The French did 
justice to William. " Le Prince d'Orange," Racine wrote to Boileau, 
" pensa etre pris, apres avoir fait des merveilles." See also the glow- 
ing description of Sterne, who, no doubt, had many times heard the 
battle fought over by old soldiers. It was on this occasion that Cor- 
poral Trim was left wounded on the field, and was nursed by the Be- 
guine. 



WILLIAM AKDEBTON. 805 

during this unfortunate summer. The police was conse- 
quently more active than ever in seeking for the clens from 
which so much treason proceeded. "With great difficulty 
and after long search, the most important of all the unli- 
censed presses was discovered. This press belonged to a 
Jacobite named William Anderton, whose intrepidity and 
fanaticism marked him out as tit to be employed on ser- 
vices from which prudent men and scrupulous men shrink. 
During two years he had been watched by the agents of 
the government : but where he exercised his craft was an 
impenetrable mystery. At length he was tracked to a 
house near Saint James's Street, where he was known by 
a feigned name, and where he passed for a working jewel- 
ler. A messenger of the press went thither with several 
assistants, and found Anderton' s wife and mother posted 
as sentinels at the door. The women knew the messen- 
ger, rushed on him, tore his hair, and cried out " Thieves" 
and " Murder." The alarm was thus given to Anderton. 
He concealed the instruments of his calling, came forth 
with an assured air, and bade defiance to the messenger, 
the Censor, the Secretary, and Little Hooknose himself. 
After a struggle he was secured. His room was searched ; 
and at first sight no evidence of his guilt appeared. But 
behind the bed was soon found a door which opened into a 
dark closet. The closet contained a press, types, and 
heaps of newly printed papers. One of these papers, en- 
titled Kemarks on the Present Confederacy and the Late 
Kevolution, is perhaps the most frantic of all the Jacobite 
libels. In this tract the Prince of Orange is gravely ac- 
cused of having ordered fifty of his wounded English sol- 
diers to be burned alive. The governing principle of his 
whole conduct, it is said, is not vain-glory, or ambition, or 
avarice, but a deadly hatred of Englishmen, and a desire 
to make them miserable. The nation is vehemently ad- 
jured, on peril of incurring the severest judgments, to rise 
up and free itself from this plague, this curse, this tyrant 
whose depravity makes it difficult to believe that he can 
have been procreated by a human pair. Many copies were 
also found of another paper, somewhat less ferocious, but 
perhaps more dangerous, entitled, A French Conquest 
neither desirable nor practicable. In this tract also the 



306 macaulay's miscellaneous weitings. 

people are exhorted to rise in insurrection. They are 
assured that a great part of the army is with them. The 
forces of the Prince of Orange will melt away : he will be 
glad to make his escape ; and a charitable hope is sneer- 
ingly expressed that it may not be necessary to do him 
harm beyond sending him back to Loo, where he may live 
surrounded by luxuries for which the English have paid 
dear. 

The government, provoked and alarmed by the viru- 
lence of the Jacobite pamphleteers, determined to make 
Anderton an example. He was indicted for high treason, 
and brought to the bar of the Old Bailey. Treby, now 
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Powell, who had 
honourably distinguished himself on the day of the trial 
of the bishops, were on the Bench. It is unfortunate that 
no detailed report of the evidence has come down to us, 
and that we are forced to content ourselves with such frag- 
ments of information as can be collected from the contra- 
dictory narratives of writers evidently partial, intemperate 
and dishonest. The indictment, however, is extant ; and 
the overt acts which it imputes to the prisoner, undoubtedly 
amount to high treason.* To exhort the subjects of the 
realm to rise up and depose the King by force, and to add 
to that exhortation the expression, evidently ironical, of a 
hope that it may not be necessary to inflict on him any 
evil worse than banishment, is surely an offence which the 
least courtly lawyer will admit to be within the scope of 
the statute of Edward the Third. On this point, indeed, 
there seems to have been no dispute, either at the trial or 
subsequently. 

The prisoner denied that he had printed the libels. 
On this point it seems reasonable that, since the evidence 
has not come down to us, we should give credit to the 
judges and the jury who heard what the witnesses had to 
say. 

One argument with which Anderton had been furnished 
by his advisers, and which, in the Jacobite pasquinades of 
that time, is represented as unanswerable, was that, as the 

* It is strange that the indictment should not have "been printed in 
Howell's State Trials. The copy which is before me was made for 
Sir James Mackintosh. 



WILLIAM AKDERTON. 307 

art of printing had been unknown in the reign of Edward 
the Third, printing could not be an overt act of treason 
under a statute of that reign. The Judges treated this 
argument very lightly ; and they were surely justified in 
so treating it. For it is an argument which would lead to 
the conclusion that it could not be an overt act of treason 
to behead a King with a guillotine, or to shoot him with a 
Minie rifle. 

It was also urged in Anderton's favour, — and this was 
undoubtedly an argument well entitled to consideration, 
— that a distinction ought to be made between the author 
of a treasonable paper and the man who merely printed 
it. The former could not pretend that he had not under- 
stood the meaning of the words which he had himself se- 
lected. But to the latter those words might convey no 
idea whatever. The metaphors, the allusions, the sar- 
casms, might be far beyond his comprehension ; and, while 
his hands were busy among the types, his thoughts might 
be wandering to things altogether unconnected with the 
manuscript which was before him. It is undoubtedly true 
that it may be no crime to print what it would be a great 
crime to write. Bat this is evidently a matter concerning 
which no general rule can be laid down. Whether Ander- 
ton had, as a mere mechanic, contributed to spread a work 
the tendency of which he did not suspect, or had know- 
ingly lent his help to raise a rebellion, was a question for 
the jury ; and the jury might reasonably infer from his 
change of his name, from the secret manner in which he 
worked, from the strict watch kept by his wife and mother, 
and from the fury with which, even in the grasp of the 
messengers, he railed at the government, that he was not 
the unconscious tool, but the intelligent and zealous accom- 
plice of traitors. The twelve, after passing a considerable 
time in deliberation, informed the Court that one of them 
entertained doubts. Those doubts were removed by the 
arguments of Treby and Powell ; and a verdict of Guilty 
was found. 

The fate of the prisoner remained during some time in 
suspense. The Ministers hoped that he might be induced 
to save his own neck at the expense of the necks of the 
pamphleteers who had employed him. But his natural 



308 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 

courage was kept up by spiritual stimulants, which the 
nonjuring divines well understood how to administer. He 
suffered death with fortitude, and continued to revile the 
government to the last. The Jacobites clamoured loudly 
against the cruelty of the Judges who tried him, and of 
the Queen who had left him for execution, and, not very 
consistently, represented him at once as a poor ignorant 
artisan, who was not aware of the nature and tendency of 
the act for which he suffered, and as a martyr who had 
heroically laid down his life for the banished King and the 
persecuted Church.* 



CHAELSS MONTAGUE. 

Another director of the Whig party was Charles Mon- 
tague. He was often, when he had risen to power, hon- 
ours and riches, called an upstart by those who envied his 
success. That they should have called him so, may seem 
strange ; for few of the statesmen of his time could show 
such a pedigree as his. He sprang from a family as old 
as the Conquest : he was in the succession to an earldom, 
and was, by the paternal side, cousin of three earls. But 
he was the younger son of a younger brother ; and that 
phrase had, ever since the time of Shakspeare and Kaleigh, 
and perhaps before their time, been proverbially used to 
designate a person so poor as to be broken to the most 
abject servitude, or ready for the most desperate adven- 
ture. 

Charles Montague was early destined for the Church, 
was entered on the foundation of Westminster, and, after 
distinguishing himself there, by skill in Latin versifica- 
tion, was sent up to Trinity College, Cambridge. At 
Cambridge the philosophy of Des Cartes was still domi- 
nant in the schools. But a few select spirits had separated 
from the crowd, and formed a fit audience round a far 

* Most of the information which has come down to us about An- 
derton's case will be found in Howell's State Trials. 



CHAELES MONTAGUE. 309 

greater teacher.* Conspicuous among the youths of high 
promise who were proud to sit at the feet of Newton, was 
the quick and versatile Montague. Under such guidance 
the young student made considerable proficiency in the 
severe sciences : but poetry was his favourite pursuit ; and 
when the University invited her sons to celebrate royal 
marriages and funerals, he was generally allowed to have 
surpassed his competitors. His fame travelled to London : 
he was thought a clever lad by the wits who met at 
Wills's, and the lively parody which he wrote, in concert 
with his friend and fellow-student Prior, on Dry den's Hind 
and Panther, was received with great applause. 

At this time all Montague's wishes pointed towards the 
Church. At a later period, when he was a peer with 
twelve thousand a year, when his villa on the Thames was 
regarded as the most delightful of all suburban retreats, 
when he was said to revel in Tokay from the Imperial cel- 
lar, and in soups made out of birds' nests brought from 
the Indian Ocean, and costing three guineas a-piece, his 
enemies were fond of reminding him that there had been 
a time when he had eked out by his wits an income of 
barely fifty pounds, when he had been happy with a 
trencher of mutton chops and a flagon of ale from the Col- 
lege buttery, and when a tithe pig was the rarest luxury 
for which he had dared to hope. The Eevolution came, 
and changed his whole scheme of life. Pie obtained, by 
the influence of Dorset, who took a peculiar pleasure in 
befriending young men of promise, a seat in the House of 
Commons. Still, during a few months, the needy scholar 
hesitated between politics and divinity. But it soon be- 
came clear that, in the new order of things, parliamentary 
ability must fetch a higher price than any other kind of 
ability ; and he felt that in parliamentary ability he had 
no superior. He was in the very situation for which he 
was peculiarly fitted by nature ; and during some years 
his life was a series of triumphs. 

Of him, as of several of his contemporaries, especially 
of Mulgrave and of Sprat, it may be said that his fame 
has suffered from the folly of those editors who, down to 

* See Whiston's Autobiography. 



310 macatjlay's miscellaneous wettings. 

our own time, have persisted in reprinting his rhymes 
among the works of the British poets. There is not a year 
in which hundreds of verses as good as any that he ever 
wrote, are not sent in for the Newdigate prize at Oxford, 
and for the Chancellor's medal at Cambridge. His mind 
had indeed great quickness and vigour, but not that kind 
of quickness and vigour which produces great dramas or 
odes : and it is most unjust to him that his Man of Hon- 
our and his Epistle on the Battle of the Boyne should be 
placed side by side with Comus and Alexander's Feast. 
Other eminent statesmen and orators, Walpcle, Pulteney, 
Chatham, Fox, wrote poetry not better than his. But for- 
tunately for them, their metrical compositions were never 
thought worthy to be admitted into any collection of our 
national classics. 

It has long been usual to represent the imagination 
under the figure of a wing, and to call the successful exer- 
tions of the imagination flights. One poet is the eagle : 
another is the swan : a third modestly compares himself 
to the bee. But none of these types would have suited 
Montague. His genius may be compared to that pinion 
which, though it is too weak to lift the ostrich into the 
air, enables her, while she remains on the earth, to outrun 
hound, horse and dromedary. If the man who possesses 
this kind of genius attempts to ascend the heaven of in- 
vention, his awkward and unsuccessful efforts expose him 
to derision. But if he will be content to stay in the ter- 
restrial region of business, he will find that the faculties 
which would not enable him to soar into a higher sphere, 
will enable him to distance all his competitors in the 
lower. As a poet, Montague could never have risen above 
the crowd. But in the House of Commons, now fast be- 
coming supreme in the State, and extending its control 
over one executive department after another, the young 
adventurer soon obtained a place very different from the 
place which he occupies among men of letters. At thirty, 
he would gladly have given all his chances in life for a 
comfortable vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At thirty- 
seven, he was First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, and a Eegent of the kingdom ; and this 
elevation he owed not at all to favour, but solely to the 



CHAKLES MONTAGUE. 311 

unquestionable superiority of his talents for administration 
and debate. 

The extraordinary ability with which, at the beginning 
of the year 1692, he managed the conference on the Bill 
for regulating Trials in cases of Treason, placed him at 
Dnce in the* first rank of parliamentary orators. On that 
occasion he was opposed to a crowd of veteran senators 
renowned for their eloquence, Halifax, Eochester, Notting- 
ham, Mulgraye, and proved himself a match for them all. 
He was speedily seated at the Board of Treasury ; and 
there the clear-headed and experienced Godolphin soon 
found that his young colleague was his master. When 
Somers had quitted the House of Commons, Montague had 
no rival there. Sir Thomas Littleton, once distinguished 
as the ablest debater and man of business among the Whig 
members, was content to serve under his junior. To this 
day we may discern in many parts of our financial and 
commercial system the marks of the vigorous intellect and 
daring spirit of Montague. His bitterest enemies were 
unable to deny that some of the expedients which he had 
proposed had proved highly beneficial to the nation. But 
it w^as said that these expedients were not devised by him- 
self. He was represented, in a hundred pamphlets, as the 
daw in borrowed plumes. He had taken, it was affirmed, 
the hint of every one of his great plans from the writings 
or the conversation of some ingenious speculator. This 
reproach was, in truth, no reproach. We can scarcely ex- 
pect to find in the same human being the talents which 
are necessary for the making of new discoveries in politi- 
cal science, and the talents which obtain the assent of 
divided and tumultuous assemblies to great political re- 
forms. To be at once an Adam Smith and a Pitt, is 
scarcely possible. It is surely praise enough for a busy 
politician, that he knows how to use the theories of others, 
that he discerns, among the schemes of innumerable pro- 
jectors, the precise scheme which is wanted, and which is 
practicable, that he shapes it to suit pressing circumstances 
and popular humours, that he proposes it just when it is 
most likely to be favourably received, that he triumphantly 
defends it against all objectors, and that he carries it into 



312 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS "WHITINGS. 

execution with prudence and energy ; and to this praise 
no English statesman has a fairer claim than Montague. 

It is a remarkable proof of his self-knowledge, that, 
from the moment at which he began to distinguish himself 
in public life, he ceased to be a versifier. It does not ap- 
pear that, after he became a Lord of the Treasury, he ever 
wrote a couplet, with the exception of a few well-turned 
lines inscribed on a set of toasting glasses which were 
sacred to the most renowned Whig beauties of his time. 
He wisely determined to derive from the poetry of others 
a glory which he never would have derived from his own. 
As a patron of genius and learning, he ranks with his two 
illustrious friends, Dorset and Somers. His munificence 
fully equalled theirs ; and, though he was inferior to them 
in delicacy of taste, he succeeded in associating his name 
inseparably with Some names which will last as long as 
our language. 

Yet it must be acknowledged that Montague, with ad- 
mirable parts, and with many claims on the gratitude of 
his country, had great faults, and unhappily faults not of 
the noblest kind. His head was not strong enough to 
bear without giddiness the speed of his ascent and the 
height of his position. He became offensively arrogant 
and vain. He was too often cold to his old friends, and 
ostentatious in displaying his new riches. Above all, he 
was insatiably greedy of praise, and liked it best when it 
was of the coarsest and rankest quality. But, in 1693, 
these faults were less offensive than they became a few 
years later. 



I 



THOMAS WHAKTON. 

With Kussell, Somers, and Montague, was closely con- 
nected, during a quarter of a century, a fourth Whig, who 
in character bore little resemblance to any of them. This 
was Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip Lord Wharton. 
Thomas Wharton has been repeatedly mentioned in the 
course of this narrative. But it is now time to describe 



THOMAS TVHAWON. 313 

him more fully. He was in his forty-seventh year, but 
was still a young man in constitution, in appearance and 
in manners. Those who hated him most heartily, — and 
no man was hated more heartily, — admitted that his nat- 
ural parts were excellent, and that he was equally quali- 
fied for debate and for action. The history of his mind 
deserves notice : for it was the history of many thousands 
of minds. His rank and abilities made him so conspicu- 
ous, that in him we are able to trace distinctly the origin 
and progress of a moral taint which was epidemic among 
his contemporaries. 

He was born in the days of the Covenant, and was the 
heir of a covenanted house. His father was renowned as 
a distributor of Calvinistic tracts, and a patron of Calvin- 
istic divines. The boy's first years were passed amidst 
Geneva bands, heads of lank hair, upturned eyes, nasal 
psalmody, and sermons three hours long. Plays and 
poems, hunting and dancing, were proscribed by the aus- 
tere discipline of his saintly family. The fruits of this 
education became visible, when, from the sullen mansion 
of Puritan parents, the hot-blooded, quick-witted young 
patrician emerged into the gay and voluptuous London of 
the Eestoration. The most dissolute cavaliers stood aghast 
at the dissoluteness of the emancipated precisian. He 
early acquired and retained to the last the reputation of 
being the greatest rake in England. Of wine, indeed, he 
never became the slave ; and he used it chiefly for the pur- 
pose of making himself the master of his associates. But 
to the end of his long life the wives and daughters of his 
nearest friends were not safe from his licentious plots. 
The ribaldry of his conversation moved astonishment even 
in that age. To the religion of his country he offered, in 
the mere wantonness of impiety, insults too foul to be de- 
scribed. His mendacity and his effrontery passed into 
proverbs. Of all the liars of his time, he was the most 
deliberate, the most inventive, and the most circumstan- 
tial. What shame meant he did not seem to understand. 
No reproaches, even when pointed and barbed with the 
sharpest wit, appeared to give him pain. Great satirists, 
animated by a deadly personal aversion, exhausted all 
their strength in attacks upon him. They assailed him 
14 



314 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

with keen invective ; they assailed him with still keener 
irony ; but they found that neither invective nor irony 
could move him to any thing but an unforced smile and a 
good-humoured curse ; and they at length threw down the 
lash, acknowledging that it was impossible to make him 
feel. That, with such vices, he should have played a great 
part in life, should have carried numerous elections against 
the most formidable opposition by his personal popularity, 
should have had a large following in Parliament, should 
have risen to the highest offices of the State, seems extra- 
ordinary. But he lived in times when faction was almost 
a madness ; and he possessed in an eminent degree the 
qualities of a leader of a faction. There was a single tie 
which he respected. The falsest of mankind in all rela- 
tions but one, he was the truest of Whigs. The religious 
tenets of his family he had early renounced with con- 
tempt : but to the politics of his family he steadfastly ad- 
hered through all the temptations and dangers of half a 
century. In small things and in great, his devotion to his 
party constantly appeared. He had the finest stud in 
England ; and his delight was to win plates from Tories. 
Sometimes when, in a distant county, it was fully expected 
that the horse of a High Church squire would be. first on 
the course, down came, on the very eve of the race, Whar- 
ton's Careless, who had ceased to run at Newmarket merely 
for want of competitors, or Wharton's Gelding, for whom 
Lewis the Fourteenth had in vain offered a thousand pis- 
toles. A man whose mere sport was of this description, 
was not likely to be easily beaten in any serious contest. 
Such a master of the whole art of electioneering, England 
had never seen. Buckinghamshire was his own especial 
province ; and there he ruled without a rival. But he ex- 
tended his care over the Whig interest in Yorkshire, Cum- 
berland, Westmoreland, Wiltshire. Sometimes twenty, 
sometimes thirty, members of Parliament were named by 
him. As a canvasser he was irresistible. He never for- 
got a face that he had once seen. Nay, in the towns in 
which he wished to establish an interest, he remembered, 
not only the voters, but their families. His opponents 
were confounded by the strength of his memory and the 
affability of his deportment, and owned that it was impos- 



THOMAS WHABTOK". 315 

sible to contend against a great man who called the shoe- 
maker by his Christian name, who was sure that the 
butcher's daughter must be growing a fine girl, and who 
was anxious to know whether the blacksmith's youngest 
boy was breeched. By such arts as these he made himself 
so popular, that his journeys to the Buckinghamshire Quar- 
ter Sessions, resembled royal progresses. The bells of 
every parish through which he passed were rung, and flow- 
ers were strewed along the road. It was commonly be- 
lieved that, in the course of his life, he expended on his 
parliamentary interest not less than eighty thousand 
pounds, a sum which, when compared with the value of 
estates, must be considered as an equivalent to more than 
three hundred thousand pounds in our time. 

But the chief service which Wharton rendered to the 
Whig party, was that of bringing in recruits from the 
young aristocracy. He was quite as dexterous a canvasser 
among the embroidered coats at the Saint James's Coffee- 
house, as among the leathern aprons at Wycombe and 
Aylesbury. He had his eye on every boy of quality who 
came of age ; and it was not easy for such a boy to resist 
the arts of a noble, eloquent, and wealthy flatterer, who 
united juvenile vivacity to profound art and long experi- 
ence of the gay world. It mattered not what the novice 
preferred, gallantry or field sports, the dice box or the 
bottle. Wharton soon found out the master passion, offered 
sympathy, advice and assistance, and, while seeming to be 
only the minister of his disciple's pleasures, he made sure 
of his disciple's vote. 

The party to whose interests Wharton, with such spirit 
and constancy, devoted his time, his fortune, his talents, 
his very vices, judged him, as was natural, far too leni- 
ently. He was widely known by the very undeserved ap- 
pellation of Honest Tom. Some pious men, Burnet, for 
example, and Addison, averted their eyes from the scan- 
dal which he gave, and spoke of him, not indeed with 
esteem, yet with good-will. A most ingenious and accom- 
plished Whig, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, author of the 
Characteristics, described Wharton as the most mysterious 
of human beings, as a strange compound of best and 
worst, of private depravity and public virtue, and owned 



316 macaulay's miscellaneous whitings. 

himself unable to understand how a man utterly without 
principle in every thing but politics should in politics be 
as true as steel. But that which, in the judgment of one 
faction, more than half redeemed all Wharton's faults, 
seemed to the other faction to aggravate them all. The 
opinion which the Tories entertained of him is expressed 
in a single line written after his death by the ablest man 
of that party : " He was the most universal villain that 
ever I knew." * Wharton's political adversaries thirsted 
for his blood, and repeatedly tried to shed it. Had he not 
been a man of imperturbable temper, dauntless courage 
and consummate skill in fence, his life would have been a 
short one. But neither anger nor danger ever deprived 
him of his presence of mind : he was an incomparable 
swordsman ; and he had a peculiar way of disarming op- 
ponents, which moved the envy of all the duellists of his 
time. His friends said that he had never given a chal- 
lenge, that he had never refused one, that he had never 
taken a life, and yet that he had never fought without 
having his antagonist's life at his mercy .f 



EOBEET HAELEY, EAEL OF OXFOED AND 
MOETIMEE. 

The space which Eobert Harley fills in the history of three 
reigns, his elevation, his fall, the influence which, at a 
great crisis, he exercised on the politics of all Europe, the 
close intimacy in which he lived with some of the greatest 
wits and poets of his time, acd the frequent recurrence of 
his name in the works of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot and 
Prior, must always make him an object of interest. Yet 
the man himself was of all men the least interesting. 
There is indeed a whimsical contrast between the very 

* Swift's note on Mackay's Character of Wharton. 

f This account of Montague and Wharton I have collected from 
innumerable sources. I ought, however, to mention particularly the 
very curious Life of Wharton published immediately after his death. 



ROBERT HARLEY, EABL OF OXFORD. 317 

ordinary qualities of his mind and the very extraordinary 
vicissitudes of his fortune. 

He was the heir of a Puritan family. His father, Sir 
Edward Harley, had been conspicuous among the patriots 
of the Long Parliament, had commanded a regiment un- 
der Essex, had, after the Kestoration, been an active oppo- 
nent of the Court, had supported the Exclusion Bill, had 
harboured dissenting preachers, had frequented meeting- 
houses, and had made himself so obnoxious to the ruling 
powers that, at the time of the Western Insurrection, he 
had been placed under arrest, and his house had been 
searched for arms. When the Dutch army was marching 
from Torbay towards London, he and his eldest son Eobert 
declared for the Prince of Orange and a free Parliament, 
raised a large body of horse, took possession of Worcester, 
and evinced their zeal against ropery by publicly break- 
ing to pieces, in the High Street of that city, a piece of 
sculpture which to rigid precisians seemed idolatrous. 
Soon after the Convention became a Parliament, Eobert 
Harley was sent up to Westminster as member for a Cor- 
nish borough. His conduct was such as might have been 
expected from his birth and education. He was a Whig, 
and indeed an intolerant and vindictive Whig. Nothing 
would satisfy him but a general proscription of the Tories. 
His name appears in the list of those members who voted 
for the Sacheverell clause ; and, at the general election 
which took place in the spring of 1690, the party which 
he had persecuted made great exertions to keep him out 
of the House of Commons. A cry was raised that the 
Harleys were mortal enemies of the Church ; and this cry 
produced so much effect, that it was with difficulty that 
any of them could obtain a seat. Such was the commence- 
ment of the public life of a man whose name, a quarter of 
a century later, was inseparably coupled with the High 
f Church in the acclamations of Jacobite mobs.* 

Soon, however, it began to be observed that in every 
division Harley was in the company of those gentlemen 
who held his political opinions in abhorrence : nor was this 

* Much of my information about the Harleys I have derived from 
unpublished memoirs written by Edward Harley, younger brother of 
Robert A copy of these memoirs is among the Macintosh MSS. 



318 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 

strange : for he affected the character of a Whig of the 
old pattern ; and before the Ke volution it had always been 
supposed that a Whig was a person who watched with 
jealousy every exertion of the prerogative, who was slow 
to loose the strings of the public purse, and who was ex- 
treme to mark the faults of the ministers of the Crown. 
Such a Whig Harley still professed to be. He did not 
admit that the recent change of dynasty had made any 
change in the duties of a representative of the people. 
The new government ought to be observed as suspiciously, 
checked as severely, and supplied as sparingly, as the old 
one. Acting on these principles, he necessarily found 
himself acting with men whose principles were diametri- 
cally opposed to his. He liked to thwart the King ; they 
liked to thwart the usurper ; the consequence was that, 
whenever there was an opportunity of thwarting William, 
the Soundhead stayed in the House, or went into the lob- 
by in company with the whole crowd of Cavaliers. 

Soon Harley acquired the authority of a leader among 
those with w T hom, notwithstanding wide differences of 
opinion, he ordinarily voted. His influence in Parliament 
was indeed altogether out of proportion to his abilities. 
His intellect was both small and slow. He was unable to 
take a large view of any subject. He never acquired the 
art of expressing himself in public with fluency and per- 
spicuity. To the end of his life he remained a tedious, 
hesitating, and confused speaker.* He had none of the 
external graces of an orator. His countenance was heavy ; 
his figure mean and somewhat deformed, his gestures 
uncouth. Yet he was heard with respect. For, such as 
his mind was, it had been assiduously cultivated. His 
youth had been studious ; and to the last he continued to 
love books and the society of men of genius and learning. 
Indeed, he aspired to the character of a wit and a poet, 

* The only writer who has praised Harley's oratory, as far as I 
remember, is Mackay, who calls him eloquent. Swift scribbled in 
the margin, " A great lie." And certainly Swift was inclined to do 
more than justice to Harley. " That lord,'' said Pope, " talked of 
business in so confused a manner that you did not know what he was 
about ; and every thing he went to tell you was in the epic way, for 
he ahvays began in the middle." — Spence's Anecdotes. 



ROBERT HAELEY, EAEL OF OXFORD. 319 

and occasionally employed hours, which should have been 
very differently spent, in composing verses more execrable 
than the bellman's.* His time however was not always 
so absurdly wasted. He had that sort of industry and 
that sort of exactness, which would have made him a re- 
spectable antiquary or King at Arms. His taste led him 
to plod among old records ; and in that age it was only 
by plodding among old records that any man could obtain 
an accurate and extensive knowledge of the law of Parlia- 
ment. Having few rivals in this laborious and unattrac- 
tive pursuit, he soon began to be regarded as an oracle on 
questions of forms and privilege. His moral character 
added not a little to his influence. He had, indeed, great 
vices ; but they were not of a scandalous kind. He was 
not to be corrupted by money. His private life was regu- 
lar. No illicit amour was imputed to him even by satir- 
ists. Gambling he held in aversion ; and it was said that 
he never passed White's, then the favourite haunt of noble 
sharpers and dupes, without an exclamation of anger. 
His practice of flustering himself daily with claret, was 
hardly considered as a fault by his contemporaries. His 
knowledge, his gravity, and his independent position, 
gained for him the ear of the House ; and even his bad 
speaking was, in some sense, an advantage to him. For 
people are very loth to admit that the same man can unite 
very different kinds of excellence. It is soothing to 
envy to believe that what is splendid cannot be solid, that 
what is clear cannot be profound. Very slowly was the 
public brought to acknowledge that Mansfield was a great 
jurist, and that Burke was a great master of political sci- 
ence. Montague was a brilliant rhetorician, and, there- 
fore, though he had ten times Harley's capacity for the 

* " He used," said Pope, " to send trifling verses from Court to the 
Scriblerus Club almost every day, and would come and talk idly with 
them almost every night even when his all was at stake." Some spe- 
cimens of Harley's poetry are in print. The best, I think, is a stanza 
which he made on his own fall in 1714 ; and bad is the best. 

" To serve with love, 
And shed your blood, 
Approved is above ; 
But here below 
The example show 
'Tis fatal to be good." 



320 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 

driest parts of business, was represented by detractors as 
a superficial, prating pretender. But from the absence of 
show in Harley's discourses, many people inferred that 
there must be much substance ; and he was pronounced to 
be a deep-read, deep-thinking gentleman, not a fine 
talker, but fitter to direct affairs of state than all the fine 
talkers in the world. This character he long supported 
with that cunning which is frequently found in company 
with ambitious and unquiet mediocrity. He constantly 
had, even with his best friends, an air of mystery and re- 
serve which seemed to indicate that he knew some momen- 
tous secret, and that his mind was labouring with some 
vast design. In this way he got and long kept a high 
reputation for wisdom. It was not till that reputation had 
made him an Earl, a Knight of the Garter, Lord High 
Treasurer of England, and master of the fate of Europe, 
that his admirers began to find out that he was really a 
dull puzzle-headed man.* 

Soon after the general election of 1690, Harley, gene- 
rally voting with the Tories, began to turn Tory. The 
change was so gradual as to be almost imperceptible, but 
was not the less real. He early began to hold the Tory 
doctrine, that England ought to confine herself to a mari- 
time war. He early felt the true Tory antipathy to Dutch- 
men and to moneyed men. The antipathy to Dissenters, 
which was necessary to the completeness of the character, 
came much later. At length the transformation was com- 
plete; and the old haunter of conventicles became an 
Intolerant High Churchman. Yet to the last the traces of 
his early breeding would now and then show themselves ; 
and, while he acted after the fashion of Laud, he some- 
times wrote in the style of Praise God Barebones.j 

* The character of Harley is to be collected from innumerable pan- 
egyrics and lampoons from the works and the private correspondence 
of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Prior and Bolingbroke, and from multitudes 
of such works as Ox and Bull, the High German Doctor, and The His- 
tory of Robert Powell the Puppet Showman. 

f In a letter dated Sept. 12, 1709, a short time before he was 
brought into power on the Shoulders of the High Church mob, he 
says : <; My soul has been among lyons, even the sons of men, whose 
teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongues sharp swords. But I 
learn how good it is to wait on the Lord, and to possess one's soul in 



PAUL FOLEY. 321 



PAUL FOLEY. 



Of Paul Foley we know comparatively little. His history, 
up to a certain point, greatly resembles that of Harley : 
but he appears to have been superior to Harley both in 
parts and in elevation of character. He was the son of 
Thomas Foley, a new man, but a man of great merit, who, 
having begun life with nothing, had created a noble estate 
by iron-works, and who was renowned for his spotless in- 
tegrity and his munificent charity. The Foleys were, like 
their neighbours the Harleys, Whigs and Puritans. 
Thomas Foley lived on terms of close intimacy with Bax- 
ter, in whose writings he is mentioned with warm eulogy. 
The opinions and the attachments of Paul Foley were at 
first those of his family. But he, like Harley, became, 
merely from the vehemence of his Whiggism, an ally of 
the Tories, and might, perhaps, like Harley, have been 
completely metamorphosed into a Tory, if the process of 
transmutation had not been interrupted by death. Fo- 
ley's abilities were highly respectable, and had been im- 
proved by education. He was so wealthy that it was 
unnecessary for him to follow the law as a profession ; but 
he had studied it carefully as a science. His morals were 
without stain ; and the greatest fault which could be im- 
puted to him, was that he paraded his independence and 
disinterestedness too ostentatiously, and was so much 
afraid of being thought to fawn, that he was always 
growling.* 

peace." The letter was to Carstairs. I doubt whether Harley would 
have canted thus if he had been writiog to Atterbury. 

* The anomalous position which Harley and Foley at this time 
occupied, is noticed in the Dialogue between a Whig and a Tory, 1693. 
" Your great P. Fo — y," says the Tory, " turns cadet, and carries 
arms, under the General of the West Saxons. The two Har — ys, 
father and son, are engineers under the late Lieutenant of the Ord- 
nance, and bomb any bill which he hath once resolv'd to reduce to 
ashes." Seymour is the General of the West Saxons. Musgrave had 
been Lieutenant of the Ordnance in the reign of Charles the Second. 

14* 



322 MACATJLAT'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 



ELIZABETH VILLIEKS. 

This lady had, when a girl, inspired William with a pas- 
sion which had caused much scandal and much unhappi- 
ness in the little Court of the Hague. Her influence over 
him she owed not to her personal charms, — for it tasked 
all the art of Kneller to make her look tolerably on can- 
vass, — not to those talents which peculiarly belong to her 
sex, — for she did not excel in playful talk, and her letters 
are remarkably deficient in feminine ease and grace, — but 
to powers of mind which qualified her to partake the cares 
and guide the counsels of statesmen. To the end of her 
life great politicians sought her advice. Even Swift, the 
shrewdest and most cynical of her contemporaries, pro- 
nounced her the wisest of women, and more than once 
sate, fascinated by her conversation, from two in the after- 
noon till near midnight.* By degrees the virtues and 
charms of Mary conquered the first place in her husband's 
affection. But he still, in difficult conjunctures, frequently 
applied to Elizabeth Villiers for advice and assistance. 



DEATH OF MAEY II. 

William had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife 
had, during two or three days, been poorly ; and on the 
preceding evening grave symptoms had appeared. Sir 
Thomas Millington, who was physician in ordinary to the 
King, thought that she had the measles. But Kadcliffe, 
who, with coarse manners and little book learning, had 
raised himself to the first practice in London chiefly by his 
rare skill in diagnostics, uttered the more alarming words, 
small pox. That disease, over which science has since 
achieved a succession of glorious and beneficent victories, 

* See the Journal to Stella, lii., liii., fix., lxv. ; and Lady Orkney's 
Letters to Swift. 



DEATH OF MARY II. 323 

was then the most terrible of all the ministers of death. 
The havoc of the plague had been far more rapid ; but the 
plague had visited our shores only once or twice within 
living memory ; and the small pox was always present, 
filling the church-yards with corpses, tormenting with con- 
stant fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on 
those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, 
turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother 
shuddered, and making eyes and cheeks of the betrothed 
maiden objects of horror to the lover. Towards the end 
of the year 1694, this pestilence was more than usually 
severe. At length the infection spread to the palace, and 
reached the young and blooming Queen. She received the 
intimation of her danger with true greatness of soul. She 
gave orders that every lady of her bed-chamber, every 
maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not 
had the small pox, should instantly leave Kensington 
House. She locked herself up during a short time in her 
closet, burned some papers, arranged others, and then 
calmly awaited her fate. 

During two or three days there were many alternations 
of hope and fear. The physicians contradicted each other 
and themselves in a way which sufficiently indicates the 
state of medical science in that age. The disease was 
measles : it was scarlet fever : it was spotted fever : it was 
erysipelas. At one moment some symptoms, which in 
truth showed that the case was almost hopeless, were 
hailed as indications of returning health. At length all 
doubt was over. Kadcliffe's opinion proved to be right. 
It was plain that the Queen was sinking under small pox 
of the most malignant type. 

At this time William remained night and day near her 
bedside. The little couch on which he slept when he was 
in camp was spread for him in the antechamber : but he 
scarcely lay down on it. The sight of his misery, the 
Butch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt the hardest heart. 
Nothing seemed to be left of the man whose serene forti- 
tude had been the wonder of old soldiers on the disastrous 
day of Landen, and of old sailors on that fearful night 
;imong the sheets of ice and banks of sand on the banks 
sf Goree. The very domestics saw the tears running un- 



324 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

checked down that face, of which the stern composure had 
seldom been disturbed by any triumph or by any defeat. 
Several of the prelates were in attendance. The King 
drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony of grief. 
" There is no hope," he cried. " I was the happiest man 
on earth; and I am the most miserable. She had no 
fault ; none : you knew her well : but you could not know, 
nobody but myself could know, her goodness.'' Tenison 
undertook to tell her that she was dying. He was afraid 
that such a communication, abruptly made, might agitate 
her violently, and began with much management. But 
she soon caught his meaning, and with that gentle woman- 
ly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame, sub- 
mitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small 
cabinet in which her most important papers were locked 
up, gave orders that, as soon as she was no more, it should 
be delivered to the King, and then dismissed worldly 
cares from her mind. She received the Eucharist, and 
repeated her part of the office with unimpaired memory 
and intelligence, though in a feeble voice. She observed 
that Tenison had been long standing at her bedside, and, 
with that sweet courtesy which was habitual to her, fal- 
tered out her commands that he would sit down, and re- 
peated them till he obeyed. After she had received the 
sacrament she sank rapidly, and uttered only a few broken 
words. Twice she tried to take a last farewell of him 
whom she had loved so truly and entirely : but she was 
unable to speak. He had a succession of fits so alarming, 
that his Privy Councillors, who were assembled in a neigh- 
bouring room, were apprehensive for his reason and his 
life. The Duke of Leeds, at the request of his colleagues, 
ventured to assume the friendly guardianship of which 
minds deranged by sorrow stand in need. A few minutes 
before the Queen expired, William was removed, almost 
insensible, from the sick room. 

Mary died in peace with Anne. Before the physicians 
had pronounced the case hopeless, the Princess, who was 
then in very delicate health, had sent a kind message ; 
and Mary had returned a kind answer. The Princess had 
then proposed to come herself; but William had, in very 
gracious terms, declined the offer. The excitement of an 



DEATH OF MARY II. . 325 

interview, he said, would be too much for both sisters. 
If a favourable turn took place, Her Koyal Highness 
should be most welcome to Kensington. A few hours 
later all was over.* 

The public sorrow was great and general. For Mary's 
blameless life, her large charities and her winning man- 
ners had conquered the hearts of her people. When the 
Commons next met they sate for a time in profound 
silence. At length it was moved and resolved that an 
Address of Condolence should be presented to the King ; 
and then the House broke up without proceeding to other 
business. The Dutch envoy informed the States General 
that many of the members had handkerchiefs at their 
eyes. The number of sad faces in the street struck every 
observer. The mourning was more general than even the 
mourning for Charles the Second had been. On the Sun- 
day which followed the Queen's death, her virtues were 
celebrated in almost every parish church of the Capital, 
and in almost every great meeting of nonconformists. f 

The most estimable Jacobites respected the sorrow of 
William and the memory of Mary. But to the fiercer 
zealots of the party neither the house of mourning nor the 
grave was sacred. At Bristol the adherents of Sir John 
Knight rang the bells as if for a victory.^ It has often 
been repeated, and is not at all improbable, that a non- 
juring divine, in the midst of the general lamentation, 
preached on the text : " Go : see now this cursed woman 
and bury her : for she is a king's daughter." It is certain 
that some of the ejected priests pursued her to the grave 
with invectives. Her death, they said, was evidently a 
judgment for her crime. God had, from the top of Sinai, 

* Burnet, ii. 136, 138 ; Narcissus LuttrelTs Diary ; Van Citters, 
Dec. 28, (Jan. «',) 1694-5 ; L'Hermitage, Dec. 25, (Jan. 4,) Dec 28, 
(Jan. 7,) Jan. 1-11 ; Vernon to Lord Lexington, Dec. 21, 25, 28, Jan. 
1 ; Tenison's Funeral Sermon. 

f Evelyn's Diary ■ Narcissus Luttrell's Diary : Commons' Journals, 
Dec. 28, 1694 ; Shrewsbury to Lexington, of the same date : Van 
Citters of the same date; L'Hermitage, Jan. 1-11, 1695. Among 
the sermons on Mary's death, that of Sherlock, preached in the Tem- 
ple Church, and those of Howe and Bates, preached to great Presby- 
terian congregations, deserve notice. 

J Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. 



326 macatjlay's miscellaneous wettings. 

in thunder and lightning, promised length of days to chil- 
dren who should honour their parents ; and in this promise 
was plainly implied a menace. What father had ever 
been worse treated by his daughters than James by Mary 
and Anne ! Mary was gone, cut off in the prime of life, 
in the glow of beauty, in the height of prosperity ; and 
Anne would do well to profit by the warning. Wagstaffe 
went further, and dwelt much on certain wonderful coinci- 
dences of time. James had been driven from his palace 
and country in Christmas week. Mary had died in Christ- 
mas week. There could be no doubt that, if the secrets 
of Providence were disclosed to us, we should find that the 
turns of the daughter's complaint in December, 1694, 
bore an exact analogy to the turns of the father's fortune 
in December, 1688. It was at midnight that the father 
ran away from Kochester ; it was at midnight that the 
daughter expired. Such was the profundity and such the 
ingenuity of a writer whom the Jacobite schismatics justly 
regarded as one of their ablest chiefs.* 

The Whigs soon had an opportunity of retaliating. 
They triumphantly related that a scrivener in the Bo- 
rough, a staunch friend of hereditary right, while exulting 
in the judgment which had overtaken the Queen, had him- 
self fallen down dead in a fit.f 

The funeral was long remembered as the saddest and 
most august that Westminster had ever seen. While the 
Queen's remains lay in state at Whitehall, the neighbour- 
ing streets were filled every day, from sunrise to sunset, 
by crowds which made all traffic impossible. The two 
Houses with their maces followed the hearse, the Lords 
robed in scarlet and ermine, the Commons in long black 
mantles. No preceding Sovereign had ever been attended 
to the grave by a Parliament : for, till then, the Parlia- 
ment had always expired with the Sovereign. A paper had 
indeed been circulated, in which the logic of a small sharp 
pettifogger was employed to prove that writs, issued in the 
joint names of William and Mary, ceased to be of force as 
soon as William reigned alone. But this paltry cavil had 

* Remarks on some late Sermons, 1695 ; A Defence of the Arch- 
bishop's Sermon, 1695. 

f Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. 



DEATH OF MART H. 327 

completely failed. It had not even been mentioned in the 
Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper only 
to be contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy 
of the City swelled the procession. The banners of Eng- 
land and France, Scotland and Ireland, were carried by 
great nobles before the corpse. The pall was borne by the 
chiefs of the illustrious houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey,* 
and Stanley. On the gorgeous coffin of purple and gold 
were laid the crown and sceptre of the realm. The day 
was well suited to such a ceremony. The sky was dark 
and troubled ; and a few ghastly flakes of snow fell on the 
black plumes of the funeral car. Within the abbey, nave, 
choir and transept were in a blaze with innumerable wax- 
lights. The body was deposited under a magnificent can- 
opy in the centre of the church while the Primate 
preached. The earlier part of his discourse was deformed 
by pedantic divisions and subdivisions : but towards the 
close he told what he had himself seen and heard with a 
simplicity and earnestness more affecting than the most 
skilful rhetoric. Through the whole ceremony the distant 
booming of cannon was heard every minute from the bat- 
teries of the Tower. The gentle Queen sleeps among her 
illustrious kindred in the southern aisle of the Chapel of 
Henry the Seventh* 

The affection with which her husband cherished her 
memory, was soon attested by a monument the most superb 
that was ever erected to any sovereign. No scheme had 
been so much her own, none had been so near her heart, 
as that of converting the palace at Greenwich into a re- 
treat for seamen. It had occurred to her when she had 
found it difficult to provide good shelter and good attend- 
ance for the thousands of brave men who had come back 
to England wounded after the battle of La Hogue. While 
she lived scarcely any step was taken towards the accom- 
plishing of her favourite design. But it should seem that, 
as soon as her husband had lost her, he began to reproach 
himself for having neglected her wishes. No time was 
lost. A plan was furnished by Wren ; and soon an edi- 

* L'Hermitagc, March 1-11, 6-16, 1695 ; London Gazette, March 
7 ; Tenison's Funeral Sermon ; Evelyn's Diary. 



328 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

fice, surpassing that asylum which the magnificent Lewis 
had provided for his soldiers, rose on the margin of the 
Thames. Whoever reads the inscription which runs round 
the frieze of the hall, will observe that William claims no 
part of the merit of the design, and that the praise is 
ascribed to Mary alone, Had the King's life been pro- 
longed till the works were completed, a statue of her who 
was the real foundress of the institution would have had a 
conspicuous place in that court which presents two lofty 
domes and two graceful colonnades to the multitudes who 
are perpetually passing up and down the imperial river. 
But that part of the plan was never carried into effect ; 
and few of those who now gaze on the notjlest of European 
hospitals, are aware that it is a memorial of the virtues of 
the good Queen Mary, of the love and sorrow of William, 
and of the great victory of La Hogue. 



POLICY OF MAELBOKOUGH AFTER THE 
DEATH OF MARY. 

Marlborough was now as desirous to support the govern- 
ment as he had once been to subvert it. The death of 
Mary had produced a complete change in all his schemes. 
There was one event to which he looked forward with the 
most intense longing, the accession of the Princess to the 
English throne. It was certain that, on the day on which 
she began to reign, he would be in her Court all that 
Buckingham had been in the Court of James the First. 
Marlborough, too, must have been conscious of powers of 
a very different order from those which Buckingham had 
possessed, of a genius for politics not inferior to that of 
Richelieu, of a genius for war not inferior to that of Tu- 
renne. Perhaps the disgraced General, in obscurity and 
inaction, anticipated the day when his power to help and 
hurt in Europe would be equal to that of her mightiest 
princes, when he would be servilely flattered and courted 
by Caesar on one side, and by Lewis the Great on the oth- 



MARLBOROUGH'S POLICY AFTER MART'S DEATH. 329 

er, and when every year would add another hundred thou- 
sand pounds to the largest fortune that had ever been 
accumulated by any English subject. All this might be 
if Mrs. Morley were Queen. But that Mr. Freeman should 
ever see Mrs. Morley Queen, had till lately been not very 
probable. Mary's life was a much better life than his, and 
quite as good a life as her sister's. That William would 
have issue seemed unlikely. But it was generally expected 
that he would soon die. His widow might marry again, 
and might leave children who would succeed her. In these 
circumstances Marlborough might well think that he had 
very little interest in maintaining that settlement of the 
Crown which had been made by the Convention. Noth- 
ing was so likely to serve his purpose as confusion, civil 
war, another revolution, another abdication, another va- 
cancy of the throne. Perhaps the nation, incensed against 
William, yet not reconciled to James, and distracted 
between hatred of foreigners and hatred of Jesuits, 
might prefer both to the Dutch King and to the Popish 
King one who was at once a native of our country and a 
member of our Church. That this was the real explana- 
tion of Marlborough's dark and complicated plots, was, as 
we have seen, firmly believed by some of the most zealous 
Jacobites, and is in the highest degree probable. It is 
certain, that during several years he had spared no efforts 
to inflame the army and the nation against the govern- 
ment. But all was now changed. Mary was gone. By 
the Bill of Eights the Crown was entailed on Anne after 
the death of William. The death of William could not 
be far distant. Indeed, all the physicians who attended 
him wondered that he was still alive ; and, when the risks 
of war were added to the risks of disease, the probability 
seemed to be that in a few months he would be in his 
grave. Marlborough saw that it would now be madness 
to throw every thing into disorder, and to put every thing 
to hazard. He had done his best to shake the throne 
while it seemed unlikely that Anne would ever mount it 
except by violent means. But he did his best to fix it 
firmly, as soon as it became highly probable that she would 
soon be called to fill it in the regular course of nature and 
of law. 



330 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

The Princess was easily induced by the Churchills to 
write to the King a submissive and affectionate letter of 
condolence. The King, who was never much inclined to 
engage in a commerce of insincere compliments, and who 
was still in the first agonies of his grief, showed little dis- 
position to meet her advances. But Somers, who felt that 
every thing was at stake^ went to Kensington, and made 
his way into the royal closet. William was sitting there, 
so deeply sunk in melancholy that he did not seem to 
perceive that any person had entered the room. The Lord 
Keeper, after a respectful pause, broke silence, and, doubt- 
less with all that cautious delicacy which was characteris- 
tic of him, and which eminently qualified him to touch the 
sore places of the mind without hurting them, implored 
His Majesty to be reconciled to the Princess. " Do what 
you will," said William ; " I can think of no business." 
Thus authorized, the mediators speedily concluded a 
treaty.* Anne came to Kensington, and was graciously 
received ; she was lodged in Saint James's Palace; a 
guard of honour was again placed at her door ; and the 
Gazettes again, after a long interval, announced that for* 
eign ministers had had the honour of being presented to 
her.f The Churchills were again permitted to dwell under 
the royal roof. But William did not at first include them 
in the peace which he had made with their mistress. 
Marlborough remained excluded from military and politi- 
cal employment ; and it was not without much difficulty 
that he was admitted into the circle at Kensington, and 
permitted to kiss the royal hand.f The feeling with which 
he was regarded by the King explains why Anne was not 
appointed Kegent. The Eegency of Anne would have 
been the Eegency of Marlborough ; and it is not strange 
that a man whom it was not thought safe to entrust with 
any office in the State or the army should not have been 
entrusted with the whole government of the kingdom. 

* Letter from Mrs. Burnet to the Duchess of Marlborough, 1704, 
quoted by Coxe ; Shrewsbury to Russell, January 24, 1695 ; Burnet, 
ii. 149. 

f London Gazette, April 8, 15, 29, 1695. 

j Shrewsbury to Russell, January 24, 1695 ; Narcissus Luttrell's 
Diary. , 



ROBERT CHAR:t!*OCK AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 331 

Had Marlborough been of a proud and vindictive na- 
ture, be might have been provoked into raising another 
quarrel in the royal family, and into forming new cabals 
in the army. But all his passions, except ambition and 
avarice, were under strict regulation. He was destitute 
alike of the sentiment of gratitude and of the sentiment 
of revenge. He had conspired against the government 
while it was loading him with favours. He now supported 
it, though it requited his support with contumely. He 
perfectly understood his own interest : he had perfect com- 
mand of his temper : he endured decorously the hardships 
of his present situation, and contented himself by looking 
forward to a reversion which would amply repay him for a 
few years of patience. He did not indeed cease to corre- 
spond with the Court of Saint Germains : but the corre- 
spondence gradually became more and more slack, and 
seems, on his part, to have been made up of vague profes- 
sions and trifling excuses. 



BOBEKT CHAKNOCK AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 

Scarcely had Mary been laid in the grave, when restless 
and unprincipled men began to plot in earnest against the 
life of William. Foremost among these men in parts, in 
courage, and in energy, was Kobert Charnock. He had 
been liberally educated, and had, in the late reign, been 
a fellow of Magdalene College, Oxford. Alone in that 
great society he had betrayed the common cause, had con- 
sented to be the tool of the High Commission, had pub- 
licly apostatized from the Church of England, and, while 
his college was a Popish seminary, had held the office of 
Vice-President. The Eevolution came, and altered at 
once the whole course of his life. Driven from the quiet 
cloister and the old grove of oaks on the bank of the 
Cherwell, he sought haunts of a very different kind. Dur- 
ing several years he led the perilous and agitated life of a 
conspirator, passed and repassed on secret errands between 
England and France, changed his lodgings in London 
often, and was known at different coffee-houses by differ- 



332 MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 

ent names. His services had "been requited with a cap- 
tain's commission signed by the banished King. 

With Charnock was closely connected George Porter, 
an adventurer who called himself a Eoman Catholic and a 
Koyalist, but who was in truth destitute of all religious 
and of all political principle. Porter's friends could not 
deny that he was a rake and a coxcomb, that he drank, 
that he swore, that he told extravagant lies about his 
amours, and that he had been convicted of manslaughter 
for a stab given in a brawl at the playhouse.. His enemies 
affirmed that he was addicted to nauseous and horrible 
kinds of debauchery, and that he procured the means of 
indulging his infamous tastes by cheating and marauding ; 
that he was one of a gang of clippers ; that he sometimes 
got on horseback late in the evening, and stole out in dis- 
guise, and that when he returned from these mysterious 
excursions, his appearance justified the suspicion that he 
had been doing business on Hounslow Heath or Finchley 
Common.* 

Cardell Goodman, popularly called Scum Goodman, a 
knave more abandoned, if possible, than Porter, was in 
the plot. Goodman had been on the stage, had been kept 
like some much greater men, by the Duchess of Cleveland, 
had been taken into her house, had been loaded by her 
with gifts, and had requited her by bribing an Italian 
quack to poison two of her children. As the poison had 
not been administered, Goodman could be prosecuted only 
for a misdemeanour. He was tried, convicted, and sen- 
tenced to a ruinous line. He had since distinguished him- 
self as one of the first forgers of bank notes.j 

Sir William Parky ns, a wealthy knight bred to the 
law, who had been conspicuous among the Tories in the 
days of the Exclusion Bill, was one of the most important 
members of the confederacy. He bore a much fairer 
character than most of his accomplices ; but in one re- 

* Every thing bad that was known or rumoured about Porter 
came out on the State Trials of 1696. 

f As to Goodman see the evidence on the trial of Peter Cook ; 
Gleverskirke, February 28 (March 9), 1696 : L'Hermitage, April 10 
(20), 1696 ; and a pasquinade entitled the Duchess of Cleveland's Me- 
morial* 



ROBEET CHAIiNOCK A>TD HIS ACCOMPLICES. 833 

spect lie was more culpable than any of them, for he had, 
in order to retain a lucrative office which he held in the 
Court of Chancery, sworn allegiance to the Prince against 
whose life he now conspired. 

The design was imparted to Sir John Fenwick, cele- 
brated on account of the cowardly insult which he had 
offered to the deceased Queen. Fenwick, if his own asser- 
tion is to be trusted, was willing to join in an insurrection, 
but recoiled from the thought of assassination, and showed 
so much of what was in his mind, as sufficed to make him 
an object of suspicion to his less scrupulous associates. 
He kept their secret, however, as strictly as if he had 
wished them success. 

It should seem that, at first, a natural feeling restrained 
the conspirators from calling their design by the proper 
name. Even in their private consultations they did not 
as yet talk of killing the Prince of Orange. They would 
try to seize him and to carry him alive into France. If 
there were any resistance, they might be forced to use 
their swords and pistols, and nobody could be answerable 
for what a thrust or a shot might do. In the spring of 
1695, the scheme of assassination, thus thinly veiled, was 
communicated to James, and his sanction was earnestly 
requested. But week followed week, and no answer arrived 
from him. He doubtless remained silent in the hope that 
his adherents would, after a short delay, venture to act on 
their own responsibility, and that he might thus have the 
advantage without the scandal of their crime. They seem, 
indeed, to have so understood him. He had not, they 
said, authorized the attempt ; but he had not prohibited 
it ; and, apprised as he was of their plan, the absence of 
prohibition was a sufficient warrant. They therefore de- 
termined to strike : but before they could make the neces- 
sary arrangements, William set out for Flanders ; and the 
plot against his life was necessarily suspended till his re- 
turn. 



334 macaulay's miscellaneous writings. 



MAKSHALL, THE DUKE OF VILLEKOY. 

Meanwhile all Europe was looking anxiously towards the 
Low Countries. The great warrior who had been victori- 
ous at Fleurus, at Steinkirk and at Landen, had not left 
his equal behind him. But France still possessed Marshals 
well qualified for high command. Already Catinat and 
Boufners had given proofs of skill, of resolution, and of 
zeal for the interests of the state. Either of those distin- 
guished officers would have been a successor worthy of 
Luxemburg, and an antagonist worthy of William : but 
their master, unfortunately for himself, preferred to both 
the Duke of Villeroy. The new general had been Lewis's 
playmate when they were both children, had then become 
a favourite, and had never ceased to be so. In those su- 
perficial graces for which the French aristocracy was then 
renowned throughout Europe, Villeroy was pre-eminent 
among the French aristocracy. His stature was tall, his 
countenance handsome, his manners nobly and somewhat 
haughtily polite, his dress, his furniture, his equipages, 
his table, magnificent. No man told a story with more 
vivacity : no man sate his horse better in a hunting party : 
no man made love with more success : no man staked and 
lost heaps of gold with more agreeable unconcern : no man 
was more intimately acquainted with the adventures, the 
attachments, the enmities of the lords and ladies who daily 
filled the halls of Versailles. There were two characters 
especially which this fine gentleman had studied during 
many years, and of which he knew all the plaits and wind- 
ings, the character of the King, and the character of her 
who was Queen in every thing but name. But there ended 
Villeroy's acquirements. He was profoundly ignorant both 
of books and of business. At the Council Board he never 
opened his mouth without exposing himself. For war he 
had not a single qualification except that personal courage 
which was common to him with the whole class of which 
he was a member. At every great crisis of his political 
and of his military life he was alternately drunk with 
arrogance and sunk in dejection. Just before he took a 



335 

momentous step his self-confidence was boundless : he 
would listen to no suggestion : he would riot admit into his 
mind the thought that failure was possible. On the first 
check he gave up every thing for lost, became incapable of 
directing, and ran up and down in helpless despair. 
Lewis, however, loved him ; and he, to do him justice, 
loved Lewis. The kindness of the master was proof 
against all the disasters which were brought on his king- 
dom by the rashness and weakness of the servant ; and 
the gratitude of the servant was honourably, though not 
judiciously, manifested on more than one occasion after 
the death of the master.* 

Such was the general to whom the direction of the cam- 
paign in the Netherlands was confided. The Duke of 
Maine was sent to learn the art of war under this precep- 
tor. Maine, the natural son of Lewis by the Duchess of 
Montespan, had been brought up from childhood by 
Madame de Maintenon, and was loved by Lewis with the 
love of a father, by Madame de Maintenon with the not 
less tender love of a foster-mother. Grave men were scan- 
dalized by the ostentatious manner in which the King, 
while making a high profession of piety, exhibited his par- 
tiality for this offspring of a double adultery . Kindness, 
they said, was doubtless due from a parent to a child : but 
decency was also due from a Sovereign to his people. In 
spite of these murmurs the youth had been publicly ac- 
knowledged, loaded with wealth and dignities, created a 
Duke and Peer, placed, by an extraordinary act of royal 
power, above Dukes and Peers of older creation, married 
to a Princess of the blood royal, and appointed Grand 
Master of the Artillery of the Kealm. With abilities and 
courage he might have played a great part in the world. 
But his intellect was small ; his nerves w^ere w 7 eak ; and 
the women and priests who had educated him had effectu- 
ally assisted nature. He was orthodox in belief, correct 
in morals, insinuating in address, a hypocrite, a mischief- 
maker, and a coward. 

* There is an excellent portrait of Villeroy in Saint Simon's Me- 
moirs. 

THE END. 



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